Anne and Olivia of Green Gables
by cecily blythe
Summary: I always thought that Anne encountered twins so much she was destined to be one. So in this one she is.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter I. Mrs. Rachel Lynde is Surprised**

Mrs. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down into a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladies' eardrops and traversed by a brook that had its source away back in the woods of the old Cuthbert place; it was reputed to be an intricate, headlong brook in its earlier course through those woods, with dark secrets of pool and cascade; but by the time it reached Lynde's Hollow it was a quiet, well-conducted little stream, for not even a brook could run past Mrs. Rachel Lynde's door without due regard for decency and decorum; it probably was conscious that Mrs. Rachel was sitting at her window, keeping a sharp eye on everything that passed, from brooks and children up, and that if she noticed anything odd or out of place she would never rest until she had ferreted out the whys and wherefores thereof.

There are plenty of people in Avonlea and out of it, who can attend closely to their neighbor's business by dint of neglecting their own; but Mrs. Rachel Lynde was one of those capable creatures who can manage their own concerns and those of other folks into the bargain. She was a notable housewife; her work was always done and well done; she "ran" the Sewing Circle, helped run the Sunday-school, and was the strongest prop of the Church Aid Society and Foreign Missions Auxiliary. Yet with all this Mrs. Rachel found abundant time to sit for hours at her kitchen window, knitting "cotton warp" quilts-she had knitted sixteen of them, as Avonlea housekeepers were wont to tell in awed voices-and keeping a sharp eye on the main road that crossed the hollow and wound up the steep red hill beyond. Since Avonlea occupied a little triangular peninsula jutting out into the Gulf of St. Lawrence with water on two sides of it, anybody who went out of it or into it had to pass over that hill road and so run the unseen gauntlet of Mrs. Rachel's all-seeing eye.

She was sitting there one afternoon in early June. The sun was coming in at the window warm and bright; the orchard on the slope below the house was in a bridal flush of pinky- white bloom, hummed over by a myriad of bees. Thomas Lynde- a meek little man whom Avonlea people called "Rachel Lynde's husband"-was sowing his late turnip seed on the hill field beyond the barn; and Matthew Cuthbert ought to have been sowing his on the big red brook field away over by Green Gables. Mrs. Rachel knew that he ought because she had heard him tell Peter Morrison the evening before in William J. Blair's store over at Carmody that he meant to sow his turnip seed the next afternoon. Peter had asked him, of course, for Matthew Cuthbert had never been known to volunteer information about anything in his whole life.

And yet here was Matthew Cuthbert, at half-past three on the afternoon of a busy day, placidly driving over the hollow and up the hill; moreover, he wore a white collar and his best suit of clothes, which was plain proof that he was going out of Avonlea; and he had the buggy and the sorrel mare, which betokened that he was going a considerable distance. Now, where was Matthew Cuthbert going and why was he going there?

Had it been any other man in Avonlea, Mrs. Rachel, deftly putting this and that together, might have given a pretty good guess as to both questions. But Matthew so rarely went from home that it must be something pressing and unusual which was taking him; he was the shyest man alive and hated to have to go among strangers or to any place where he might have to talk. Matthew, dressed up with a white collar and driving in a buggy, was something that didn't happen often. Mrs. Rachel, ponder as she might, could make nothing of it and her afternoon's enjoyment was spoiled.

"I'll just step over to Green Gables after tea and find out from Marilla where he's gone and why," the worthy woman finally concluded. "He doesn't generally go to town this time of year and he NEVER visits; if he'd run out of turnip seed he wouldn't dress up and take the buggy to go for more; he wasn't driving fast enough to be going for a doctor. Yet something must have happened since last night to start him off. I'm clean puzzled, that's what, and I won't know a minute's peace of mind or conscience until I know what has taken Matthew Cuthbert out of Avonlea today."

Accordingly after tea Mrs. Rachel set out; she had not far to go; the big, rambling, orchard-embowered house where the Cuthberts lived was a scant quarter of a mile up the road from Lynde's Hollow. To be sure, the long lane made it a good deal further. Matthew Cuthbert's father, as shy and silent as his son after him, had got as far away as he possibly could from his fellow men without actually retreating into the woods when he founded his homestead. Green Gables was built at the furthest edge of his cleared land and there it was to this day, barely visible from the main road along which all the other Avonlea houses were so sociably situated. Mrs. Rachel Lynde did not call living in such a place LIVING at all.

"It's just STAYING, that's what," she said as she stepped along the deep-rutted, grassy lane bordered with wild rose bushes. "It's no wonder Matthew and Marilla are both a little odd, living away back here by themselves. Trees aren't much company, though dear knows if they were there'd be enough of them. I'd ruther look at people. To be sure, they seem contented enough; but then, I suppose, they're used to it. A body can get used to anything, even to being hanged, as the Irishman said."

With this Mrs. Rachel stepped out of the lane into the backyard of Green Gables. Very green and neat and precise was that yard, set about on one side with great patriarchal willows and the other with prim Lombardies. Not a stray stick nor stone was to be seen, for Mrs. Rachel would have seen it if there had been. Privately she was of the opinion that Marilla Cuthbert swept that yard over as often as she swept her house. One could have eaten a meal off the ground without overbrimming the proverbial peck of dirt.

Mrs. Rachel rapped smartly at the kitchen door and stepped in when bidden to do so. The kitchen at Green Gables was a cheerful apartment-or would have been cheerful if it had not been so painfully clean as to give it something of the appearance of an unused parlor. Its windows looked east and west; through the west one, looking out on the back yard, came a flood of mellow June sunlight; but the east one, whence you got a glimpse of the bloom white cherry-trees in the left orchard and nodding, slender birches down in the hollow by the brook, was greened over by a tangle of vines. Here sat Marilla Cuthbert, when she sat at all, always slightly distrustful of sunshine, which seemed to her too dancing and irresponsible a thing for a world which was meant to be taken seriously; and here she sat now, knitting, and the table behind her was laid for supper.

Mrs. Rachel, before she had fairly closed the door, had taken a mental note of everything that was on that table. There were three plates laid, so that Marilla must be expecting some one home with Matthew to tea; but the dishes were everyday dishes and there was only crab-apple preserves and one kind of cake, so that the expected company could not be any particular company. Yet what of Matthew's white collar and the sorrel mare? Mrs. Rachel was getting fairly dizzy with this unusual mystery about quiet, unmysterious Green Gables.

"Good evening, Rachel," Marilla said briskly. "This is a real fine evening, isn't it" Won't you sit down? How are all your folks?"

Something that for lack of any other name might be called friendship existed and always had existed between Marilla Cuthbert and Mrs. Rachel, in spite of-or perhaps because of-their dissimilarity.

Marilla was a tall, thin woman, with angles and without curves; her dark hair showed some gray streaks and was always twisted up in a hard little knot behind with two wire hairpins stuck aggressively through it. She looked like a woman of narrow experience and rigid conscience, which she was; but there was a saving something about her mouth which, if it had been ever so slightly developed, might have been considered indicative of a sense of humor.

"We're all pretty well," said Mrs. Rachel. "I was kind of afraid YOU weren't, though, when I saw Matthew starting off today. I thought maybe he was going to the doctor's."

Marilla's lips twitched understandingly. She had expected Mrs. Rachel up; she had known that the sight of Matthew jaunting off so unaccountably would be too much for her neighbor's curiosity.

"Oh, no, I'm quite well although I had a bad headache yesterday," she said. "Matthew went to Bright River. We're getting two little boys from an orphan asylum in Nova Scotia and they're coming on the train tonight."


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter IV. Matthew Cuthbert is surprised**

Matthew Cuthbert and the sorrel mare jogged comfortably over the eight miles to Bright River. It was a pretty road, running along between snug farmsteads, with now and again a bit of balsamy fir wood to drive through or a hollow where wild plums hung out their filmy bloom. The air was sweet with the breath of many apple orchards and the meadows sloped away in the distance to horizon mists of pearl and purple; while

"The little birds sang as if it were The one day of summer in all the year."

Matthew enjoyed the drive after his own fashion, except during the moments when he met women and had to nod to them- for in Prince Edward island you are supposed to nod to all and sundry you meet on the road whether you know them or not.

Matthew dreaded all women except Marilla and Mrs. Rachel; he had an uncomfortable feeling that the mysterious creatures were secretly laughing at him. He may have been quite right in thinking so, for he was an odd-looking personage, with an ungainly figure and long iron-gray hair that touched his stooping shoulders, and a full, soft brown beard which he had worn ever since he was twenty. In fact, he had looked at twenty very much as he looked at sixty, lacking a little of the grayness.

When he reached Bright River there was no sign of any train; he thought he was too early, so he tied his horse in the yard of the small Bright River hotel and went over to the station house. The long platform was almost deserted; the only living creature in sight being a girl who was sitting on a pile of shingles at the extreme end. Matthew, barely noting that it WAS two girl, sidled past them as quickly as possible without looking at her. Had he looked he could hardly have failed to notice the tense rigidity and expectation of their attitude and expression. They were sitting there waiting for something or somebody and, since sitting and waiting was the only thing to do just then, they sat and waited with all their might and main.

Matthew encountered the stationmaster locking up the ticket office preparatory to going home for supper, and asked him if the five-thirty train would soon be along.

"The five-thirty train has been in and gone half an hour ago," answered that brisk official. "But there were two passengers dropped off for you two little girls. They're sitting out there on the shingles. I asked them to go into the ladies' waiting room, but the younger one informed me gravely that she preferred to stay outside. `There was more scope for imagination,' she said. She's a case, I should say and the other one wanted to stay with her, I guess.

"I'm not expecting girls," said Matthew blankly. "It's two boys I've come for. They should be here. Mrs. Alexander Spencer was to bring them over from Nova Scotia for me."

The stationmaster whistled.

"Guess there's some mistake," he said. "Mrs. Spencer came off the train with those girls and gave them into my charge. Said you and your sister were adopting them from an orphan asylum and that you would be along for them presently. That's all I know about it-and I haven't got any more orphans concealed hereabouts."

"I don't understand," said Matthew helplessly, wishing that Marilla was at hand to cope with the situation.

"Well, you'd better question the girls," said the station- master carelessly. "I dare say they'll be able to explain- she's got a tongue of her own, that's certain. Maybe they were out of boys of the brand you wanted."

He walked jauntily away, being hungry, and the unfortunate Matthew was left to do that which was harder for him than bearding a lion in its den-walk up to a girl- two girls- two strange girls- two orphan girls-and demand of them why they weren't boys. Matthew groaned in spirit as he turned about and shuffled gently down the platform towards her.

They had been watching him ever since he had passed them and the little one had her eyes on him now. Matthew was not looking at them and would not have seen what she was really like if he had been, but an ordinary observer would have seen this: Two children of about eleven, garbed in very short, very tight, very ugly dresses of yellowish-gray wincey. They wore a faded brown sailor hat and beneath the hat, extending down the littlers back, were two braids of very thick, decidedly red hair. The youngers face was small, white and thin, also much freckled; her mouth was large and so were her eyes, which looked green in some lights and moods and gray in others. Whilst the other had a short crop of brown hair and lovely, velvety brown eyes.

So far, the ordinary observer; an extraordinary observer might have seen that the formers chin were very pointed and pronounced; that the big eyes were full of spirit and vivacity; that her mouth was sweet-lipped and expressive; that the latter foreheads were broad and full, her face was round and plump and her eyes were ; in short, our discerning extraordinary observer might have concluded that no commonplace souls inhabited the body of these stray women- children of whom shy Matthew Cuthbert was so ludicrously afraid.

Matthew, however, was spared the ordeal of speaking first, for as soon as the littler concluded that he was coming to them she stood up, grasping with one thin brown hand the handle of a shabby, old-fashioned carpet-bag; the other she held out to him.

"I suppose you are Mr. Matthew Cuthbert of Green Gables?" she said in a peculiarly clear, sweet voice. "I'm very glad to see you. I was beginning to be afraid you weren't coming for me and I was imagining all the things that might have happened to prevent you. I had made up my mind that if you didn't come for me to-night I'd go down the track to that big wild cherry-tree at the bend, and climb up into it to stay all night. I wouldn't be a bit afraid, and it would be lovely to sleep in a wild cherry-tree all white with bloom in the moonshine, don't you think? You could imagine you were dwelling in marble halls, couldn't you? And I was quite sure you would come for me in the morning, if you didn't to-night."

Matthew had taken the two scrawny little hands awkwardly in his; then and there he decided what to do. He could not tell these children with the glowing eyes and beautiful hair that there had been a mistake; he would take them home and let Marilla do that. They couldn't be left at Bright River anyhow, no matter what mistake had been made, so all questions and explanations might as well be deferred until he was safely back at Green Gables.

"I'm sorry I was late," he said shyly. "Come along. The horse is over in the yard. Give me your bags."

"Oh, I can carry it," the younger child responded cheerfully. "It isn't heavy. I've got all my worldly goods in it, but it isn't heavy. And if it isn't carried in just a certain way the handle pulls out-so I'd better keep it because I know the exact knack of it. It's an extremely old carpet-bag. Oh, I'm very glad you've come, even if it would have been nice to sleep in a wild cherry-tree. We've got to drive a long piece, haven't we? Mrs. Spencer said it was eight miles. I'm glad because I love driving. Oh, it seems so wonderful that I'm going to live with you and belong to you. I've never belonged to anybody-not really. But the asylum was the worst. I've only been in it four months, but that was enough. I don't suppose you ever were an orphan in an asylum, so you can't possibly understand what it is like. It's worse than anything you could imagine. Mrs. Spencer said it was wicked of me to talk like that, but I didn't mean to be wicked. It's so easy to be wicked without knowing it, isn't it? They were good, you know-the asylum people. But there is so little scope for the imagination in an asylum-only just in the other orphans. It was pretty interesting to imagine things about them-to imagine that perhaps the girl who sat next to you was really the daughter of a belted earl, who had been stolen away from her parents in her infancy by a cruel nurse who died before she could confess. I used to lie awake at nights and imagine things like that, because I didn't have time in the day. I guess that's why I'm so thin-I AM dreadful thin, ain't I? There isn't a pick on my bones. I do love to imagine I'm nice and plump, with dimples in my elbows."

"Anne give him your bag." said the older one.

"I don't see why I should" said the younger.

With this Matthew's companions stopped talking, partly because they were out of breath and partly because they had reached the buggy. Not another word did the party say until they had left the village and were driving down a steep little hill, the road part of which had been cut so deeply into the soft soil, that the banks, fringed with blooming wild cherry-trees and slim white birches, were several feet above their heads.

"Sorry what are your names?" said Matthew.

"I'm called Cordelia."

"Mr Cuthbert her name is Anne and my name is Olivia."

Anne put out her hand and broke off a branch of wild plum that brushed against the side of the buggy.

"Isn't that beautiful? What did that tree, leaning out from the bank, all white and lacy, make you think of?" she asked.

"Well now, I dunno," said Matthew.

"Why, a bride, of course-a bride all in white with a lovely misty veil. I've never seen one, but I can imagine what she would look like. I don't ever expect to be a bride myself. I'm so homely nobody will ever want to marry me- unless it might be a foreign missionary. I suppose a foreign missionary mightn't be very particular. But I do hope that some day I shall have a white dress. That is my highest ideal of earthly bliss. I just love pretty clothes. And I've never had a pretty dress in my life that I can remember-but of course it's all the more to look forward to, isn't it? And then I can imagine that I'm dressed gorgeously. This morning when I left the asylum I felt so ashamed because I had to wear this horrid old wincey dress. All the orphans had to wear them, you know. A merchant in Hopeton last winter donated three hundred yards of wincey to the asylum. Some people said it was because he couldn't sell it, but I'd rather believe that it was out of the kindness of his heart, wouldn't you? When we got on the train I felt as if everybody must be looking at me and pitying me. But I just went to work and imagined that I had on the most beautiful pale blue silk dress-because when you ARE imagining you might as well imagine something worth while-and a big hat all flowers and nodding plumes, and a gold watch, and kid gloves and boots. I felt cheered up right away and I enjoyed my trip to the Island with all my might. I wasn't a bit sick coming over in the boat. Neither was Mrs. Spencer although she generally is. She said she hadn't time to get sick, watching to see that I didn't fall overboard. She said she never saw the beat of me for prowling about. But if it kept her from being seasick it's a mercy I did prowl, isn't it? And I wanted to see everything that was to be seen on that boat, because I didn't know whether I'd ever have another opportunity. Oh, there are a lot more cherry-trees all in bloom! This Island is the bloomiest place. I just love it already, and I'm so glad I'm going to live here. I've always heard that Prince Edward Island was the prettiest place in the world, and I used to imagine I was living here, but I never really expected I would. It's delightful when your imaginations come true, isn't it? But those red roads are so funny. When we got into the train at Charlottetown and the red roads began to flash past I asked Mrs. Spencer what made them red and she said she didn't know and for pity's sake not to ask her any more questions. She said I must have asked her a thousand already. I suppose I had, too, but how you going to find out about things if you don't ask questions? And what DOES make the roads red?"

"Well now, I dunno," said Matthew.

"Well, that is one of the things to find out sometime. Isn't it splendid to think of all the things there are to find out about? It just makes me feel glad to be alive- it's such an interesting world. It wouldn't be half so interesting if we know all about everything, would it? There'd be no scope for imagination then, would there? But am I talking too much? People are always telling me I do. Would you rather I didn't talk? If you say so I'll stop. I can STOP when I make up my mind to it, although it's difficult."

Matthew, much to his own surprise, was enjoying himself. Like most quiet folks he liked talkative people when they were willing to do the talking themselves and did not expect him to keep up his end of it. But he had never expected to enjoy the society of a little girl. Women were bad enough in all conscience, but little girls were worse. He detested the way they had of sidling past him timidly, with sidewise glances, as if they expected him to gobble them up at a mouthful if they ventured to say a word. That was the Avonlea type of well-bred little girl. But this freckled witch was very different, and although he found it rather difficult for his slower intelligence to keep up with her brisk mental processes he thought that he "kind of liked her chatter." So he said as shyly as usual:

"Oh, you can talk as much as you like. I don't mind."

"Oh, I'm so glad. I know you and I are going to get along together fine. It's such a relief to talk when one wants to and not be told that children should be seen and not heard. I've had that said to me a million times if I have once. And people laugh at me because I use big words. But if you have big ideas you have to use big words to express them, haven't you?"

"Well now, that seems reasonable," said Matthew.

"Mrs. Spencer said that my tongue must be hung in the middle. But it isn't-it's firmly fastened at one end. Mrs. Spencer said your place was named Green Gables. I asked her all about it. And she said there were trees all around it. I was gladder than ever. I just love trees. And there weren't any at all about the asylum, only a few poor weeny-teeny things out in front with little whitewashed cagey things about them. They just looked like orphans themselves, those trees did. It used to make me want to cry to look at them. I used to say to them, `Oh, you POOR little things! If you were out in a great big woods with other trees all around you and little mosses and Junebells growing over your roots and a brook not far away and birds singing in you branches, you could grow, couldn't you? But you can't where you are. I know just exactly how you feel, little trees.' I felt sorry to leave them behind this morning. You do get so attached to things like that, don't you? Is there a brook anywhere near Green Gables? I forgot to ask Mrs. Spencer that."

"Well now, yes, there's one right below the house."

"Fancy. It's always been one of my dreams to live near a brook. I never expected I would, though. Dreams don't often come true, do they? Wouldn't it be nice if they did? But just now I feel pretty nearly perfectly happy. I can't feel exactly perfectly happy because-well, what color would you call this?"

She twitched one of her long glossy braids over her thin shoulder and held it up before Matthew's eyes. Matthew was not used to deciding on the tints of ladies' tresses, but in this case there couldn't be much doubt.

"It's red, ain't it?" he said.

The girl let the braid drop back with a sigh that seemed to come from her very toes and to exhale forth all the sorrows of the ages.

"Yes, it's red whilst my sister can have beautiful brown hair and a lovely name," she said resignedly. "Now you see why I can't be perfectly happy. Nobody could who has red hair. I don't mind the other things so much-the freckles and the green eyes and my skinniness. I can imagine them away. I can imagine that I have a beautiful rose-leaf complexion and lovely starry violet eyes. But I CANNOT imagine that red hair away. I do my best. I think to myself, `Now my hair is a glorious black, black as the raven's wing.' But all the time I KNOW it is just plain red and it breaks my heart. It will be my lifelong sorrow. I read of a girl once in a novel who had a lifelong sorrow but it wasn't red hair. Her hair was pure gold rippling back from her alabaster brow. What is an alabaster brow? I never could find out. Can you tell me?"

"Well now, I'm afraid I can't," said Matthew, who was getting a little dizzy. He felt as he had once felt in his rash youth when another boy had enticed him on the merry-go- round at a picnic.

"Well, whatever it was it must have been something nice because she was divinely beautiful. Have you ever imagined what it must feel like to be divinely beautiful?"

"Well now, no, I haven't," confessed Matthew ingenuously.

"I have, often. Which would you rather be if you had the choice-divinely beautiful or dazzlingly clever or angelically good?"

"Well now, I-I don't know exactly."

"Neither do I. I can never decide. But it doesn't make much real difference for it isn't likely I'll ever be either. It's certain I'll never be angelically good. Mrs. Spencer says-oh, Mr. Cuthbert! Oh, Mr. Cuthbert! Oh, Mr. Cuthbert!"

That was not what Mrs. Spencer had said; neither had the child tumbled out of the buggy nor had Matthew done anything astonishing. They had simply rounded a curve in the road and found themselves in the "Avenue."

The "Avenue," so called by the Newbridge people, was a stretch of road four or five hundred yards long, completely arched over with huge, wide-spreading apple-trees, planted years ago by an eccentric old farmer. Overhead was one long canopy of snowy fragrant bloom. Below the boughs the air was full of a purple twilight and far ahead a glimpse of painted sunset sky shone like a great rose window at the end of a cathedral aisle.

Its beauty seemed to strike the child dumb. She leaned back in the buggy, her thin hands clasped before her, her face lifted rapturously to the white splendor above. Even when they had passed out and were driving down the long slope to Newbridge she never moved or spoke. Still with rapt face she gazed afar into the sunset west, with eyes that saw visions trooping splendidly across that glowing background. Through Newbridge, a bustling little village where dogs barked at them and small boys hooted and curious faces peered from the windows, they drove, still in silence. When three more miles had dropped away behind them the child had not spoken. She could keep silence, it was evident, as energetically as she could talk.

"I guess you're feeling pretty tired and hungry," Matthew ventured to say at last, accounting for her long visitation of dumbness with the only reason he could think of. "But we haven't very far to go now-only another mile."

She came out of her reverie with a deep sigh and looked at him with the dreamy gaze of a soul that had been wondering afar, star-led.

"Oh, Mr. Cuthbert," she whispered, "that place we came through-that white place-what was it?"

"Well now, you must mean the Avenue," said Matthew after a few moments' profound reflection. "It is a kind of pretty place."

"Pretty? Oh, PRETTY doesn't seem the right word to use. Nor beautiful, either. They don't go far enough. Oh, it was wonderful-wonderful. It's the first thing I ever saw that couldn't be improved upon by imagination. It just satisfies me here"-she put one hand on her breast-"it made a queer funny ache and yet it was a pleasant ache. Did you ever have an ache like that, Mr. Cuthbert?"

"Well now, I just can't recollect that I ever had."

"I have it lots of time-whenever I see anything royally beautiful. But they shouldn't call that lovely place the Avenue. There is no meaning in a name like that. They should call it-let me see-the White Way of Delight. Isn't that a nice imaginative name? When I don't like the name of a place or a person I always imagine a new one and always think of them so. There was a girl at the asylum whose name was Hepzibah Jenkins, but I always imagined her as Rosalia DeVere. Other people may call that place the Avenue, but I shall always call it the White Way of Delight. Have we really only another mile to go before we get home? I'm glad and I'm sorry. I'm sorry because this drive has been so pleasant and I'm always sorry when pleasant things end. Something still pleasanter may come after, but you can never be sure. And it's so often the case that it isn't pleasanter. That has been my experience anyhow. But I'm glad to think of getting home. You see, I've never had a real home since I can remember. It gives me that pleasant ache again just to think of coming to a really truly home. Oh, isn't that pretty!"

"Anne speak when you're spoken. I'm sorry Mr Cuthbert."

They had driven over the crest of a hill. Below them was a pond, looking almost like a river so long and winding was it. A bridge spanned it midway and from there to its lower end, where an amber-hued belt of sand-hills shut it in from the dark blue gulf beyond, the water was a glory of many shifting hues-the most spiritual shadings of crocus and rose and ethereal green, with other elusive tintings for which no name has ever been found. Above the bridge the pond ran up into fringing groves of fir and maple and lay all darkly translucent in their wavering shadows. Here and there a wild plum leaned out from the bank like a white-clad girl tip-toeing to her own reflection. From the marsh at the head of the pond came the clear, mournfully-sweet chorus of the frogs. There was a little gray house peering around a white apple orchard on a slope beyond and, although it was not yet quite dark, a light was shining from one of its windows.

"That's Barry's pond," said Matthew.

"Oh, I don't like that name, either. I shall call it-let me see-the Lake of Shining Waters. Yes, that is the right name for it. I know because of the thrill. When I hit on a name that suits exactly it gives me a thrill. Do things ever give you a thrill?"

Matthew ruminated.

"Well now, yes. It always kind of gives me a thrill to see them ugly white grubs that spade up in the cucumber beds. I hate the look of them."

"Oh, I don't think that can be exactly the same kind of a thrill. Do you think it can? There doesn't seem to be much connection between grubs and lakes of shining waters, does there? But why do other people call it Barry's pond?"

"I reckon because Mr. Barry lives up there in that house. Orchard Slope's the name of his place. If it wasn't for that big bush behind it you could see Green Gables from here. But we have to go over the bridge and round by the road, so it's near half a mile further."

"Has Mr. Barry any little girls? Well, not so very little either-about my size."

"He's got one about eleven. Her name is Diana."

"Oh!" with a long indrawing of breath. "What a perfectly lovely name!"

"Well now, I dunno. There's something dreadful heathenish about it, seems to me. I'd ruther Jane or Mary or some sensible name like that. But when Diana was born there was a schoolmaster boarding there and they gave him the naming of her and he called her Diana."

"I wish there had been a schoolmaster like that around when I was born, then. Oh, here we are at the bridge. I'm going to shut my eyes tight. I'm always afraid going over bridges. I can't help imagining that perhaps just as we get to the middle, they'll crumple up like a jack-knife and nip us. So I shut my eyes. But I always have to open them for all when I think we're getting near the middle. Because, you see, if the bridge DID crumple up I'd want to SEE it crumple. What a jolly rumble it makes! I always like the rumble part of it. Isn't it splendid there are so many things to like in this world? There we're over. Now I'll look back. Good night, dear Lake of Shining Waters. I always say good night to the things I love, just as I would to people I think they like it. That water looks as if it was smiling at me."

When they had driven up the further hill and around a corner Matthew said:

"We're pretty near home now. That's Green Gables over-"

"Oh, don't tell me," she interrupted breathlessly, catching at his partially raised arm and shutting her eyes that she might not see his gesture. "Let me guess. I'm sure I'll guess right."

She opened her eyes and looked about her. They were on the crest of a hill. The sun had set some time since, but the landscape was still clear in the mellow afterlight. To the west a dark church spire rose up against a marigold sky. Below was a little valley and beyond a long, gently-rising slope with snug farmsteads scattered along it. From one to another the child's eyes darted, eager and wistful. At last they lingered on one away to the left, far back from the road, dimly white with blossoming trees in the twilight of the surrounding woods. Over it, in the stainless southwest sky, a great crystal-white star was shining like a lamp of guidance and promise.

"That's it, isn't it?" she said, pointing.

Matthew slapped the reins on the sorrel's back delightedly.

"Well now, you've guessed it! But I reckon Mrs. Spencer described it so's you could tell."

"No, she didn't-really she didn't. All she said might just as well have been about most of those other places. I hadn't any real idea what it looked like. But just as soon as I saw it I felt it was home. Oh, it seems as if I must be in a dream. Do you know, my arm must be black and blue from the elbow up, for I've pinched myself so many times today. Every little while a horrible sickening feeling would come over me and I'd be so afraid it was all a dream. Then I'd pinch myself to see if it was real-until suddenly I remembered that even supposing it was only a dream I'd better go on dreaming as long as I could; so I stopped pinching. But it IS real and we're nearly home."

With a sigh of rapture she relapsed into silence. Matthew stirred uneasily. He felt glad that it would be Marilla and not he who would have to tell this waif of the world that the home she longed for was not to be theirs after all. They drove over Lynde's Hollow, where it was already quite dark, but not so dark that Mrs. Rachel could not see them from her window vantage, and up the hill and into the long lane of Green Gables. By the time they arrived at the house Matthew was shrinking from the approaching revelation with an energy he did not understand. It was not of Marilla or himself he was thinking of the trouble this mistake was probably going to make for them, but of the children's disappointment. When he thought of that rapt light being quenched in her eyes he had an uncomfortable feeling that he was going to assist at murdering something-much the same feeling that came over him when he had to kill a lamb or calf or any other innocent little creature.

The yard was quite dark as they turned into it and the poplar leaves were rustling silkily all round it.

"Listen to the trees talking in their sleep," she whispered, as he lifted her to the ground. "What nice dreams they must have!"

Then, holding tightly to the carpet-bag which contained "all her worldly goods," she followed him into the house.


	3. Chapter 3

**CHAPTER III. Marilla Cuthbert is Surprised**

Marilla walked briskly to the door as Matthew opened it. But when she saw the two odd figures in the stiff, ugly dresses, one with braids of red and the eager, bright eyes, and the other a crop of brown hair she stared in shock.

"Matthew Cuthbert, who are they?" she inquired indignantly. "Where are the two boys I asked for? No boys! But we need boys," insisted Marilla. "We sent word to Mrs. Spencer to bring two boys."

"Well, she didn't. She brought THESE two. I asked the station-master. And no man with any sense of duty would have left them at the railway station, no matter where the mistake had come in."

"Well, I'm sorry but we don't need girls. We need at least one boy."

"What's going on here? Why did you let us grow affectionate to Green Gables if we are not wanted here? You're upsetting Anne? Who had sat down on a chair conveniently placed in the middle of the room, crossing her arms upon her lap, and burying her face in them, she proceeded to cry and cry and cry whilst Olivia stared disappointingly at Matthew. Marilla and Matthew looked at each other depressingly on one side of the table. Neither of them knew what to say or do. Finally Marilla stepped lamely into the breach. Olivia was happy that Marilla felt so awkward about her sister's discomfort.

"There is no need to cry about it though."

"Yes, there is!" Anne raised her head crossly, revealing tear-stains down her cheeks and quavering lips. "YOU would cry, too, if you were alone in the world and had no parents..."

"What!" said Olivia.

"...and had come to a place you thought was going to be home and found that they didn't want you and your sister because we weren't boys. This is so the most TRAGICAL thing that ever happened to me!"

A half smile, rather small and rusty, lit up Marilla's awkward expression.

"Well, you don't NEED to cry about it any more. We're not going to abandon you to-night nor any night until we can find somebody else to take charge of you two. You can stay here until we get to the problem in this affair. What are your names?"

"Why should we tell you Miss Cuthbert?" Olivia demanded.

Anne taking no heed of what Olivia said nor if she did who have cared not a single bit proceed to say persuadingly, "Will you please call me Cordelia?"

"CALL you Cordelia? Is that your name?"

"No, her name is Anne but she loves being called Cordelia and mine is Olivia." said Olivia boredly.

"It's such a perfectly elegant name." added Anne

"I don't know what on earth you mean. Why do you like being called Cordelia if it isn't your name? What's your surname?"

"Shirley," reluctantly faltered forth the owner of that name, "but please call me Cordelia. It can't matter much to you what you call me if I'm only going to be here a little while, can it? And Anne is such an unromantic name."

"Seriously Anne though we talked about this."

"Unromantic fiddlesticks!" said the bored Marilla. "Anne is a real nice sensible name. You don't need to be annoyed by it."

"I told her that."

"I'm not annoyed about it," said Anne, "only I love the name Cordelia. I have always wished that my name is Cordelia—at least, I always have of late years. When I was little I used to wish it was Geraldine, but I prefer Cordelia now. But if you want to call me Anne you have to spell A-N-N-E not A-N-N."

"Why does it matter how it is spelled?" inquired Marilla with a reluctant smile as she picked up the teapot.

"Oh, it makes so much of a difference. It sounds so much prettier. When you hear a name can't you visualise it in your imagination, just as if it was handwritten on? You should be able to; and A-n-n sounds awful, but A-n-n-e sounds so much more elegant. If you call me A-N-N-E I shall try not to be upset about not being called Cordelia."

"Well, then, AnnE and Olivia, can you explain to us how this mistake came to be made? We sent word to Mrs. Spencer to bring us two boys no more no less to help with matthew on the farm one of the weekend and one on the weekdays. Were there no boys at the asylum?"

"Oh, yes, there were so many of them besides Olivia is very good at those types of stuff. But Mrs. Spencer said UNMISTAKABLY that you wanted two girls about eleven years old. And the matron said she thought that we would do. You don't know how delighted I was and I'm sure Olivia was too. I couldn't sleep all last night for joy.

"That's true."

"Oh," she added wistfully, turning to Matthew, "why didn't you tell me at the station that you didn't want us and leave us there? If I hadn't seen the nicest places in the WORLD it wouldn't be so hard."

"What is she talking about?" demanded Marilla, staring at Matthew.

"She—she's just referring to some conversation we had on the road," said Matthew hastily. "I'm going out to put the mare in, Marilla. Have tea ready when I come back. Do you want to come with me Olivia?"

"Sure."

"Did Mrs. Spencer bring anybody over besides you and your sister?" continued Marilla when Matthew had gone out with Olivia following him.

"She brought Lily Pace for herself. Lily is only five years old and she is very beautiful and had bright golden hair. If I was very beautiful and had bright golden hair would you keep me?"

"No. We want a boy to help Matthew on the farm. A girl would be of no use to us. Take off your hat. I'll lay it and your bag on the hall table."

Anne took off her hat meekly. Matthew and Olivia came back presently and they sat down to supper. But Anne could not eat. In vain she nipped at the bread and butter and picked at the crab-apple preserve out of the little engraved glass dish by her plate. She did not really make any advancement at all.

"You're eating nothing," said Marilla sharply, eying her as if it were a serious defiencency. Anne sighed.

"I can't. I'm in the depths of despair. Can you eat when you are in the depths of despair?"

"I've never been in the depths of despair, so I don't know," responded Marilla.

"Have you never? Well, did you ever try to IMAGINE you were in the depths of despair?"

"Why would she want to Anne and some people weren't gifted with imagination like you Anne."

"Indeed I didn't."

"Then I don't think you can understand what it's like. It's very uncomfortable feeling indeed. When you try to eat a lump comes right up in your throat and you can't swallow anything, not even if it was a chocolate caramel. I had one chocolate caramel once two years ago and it was simply delicious. I've often dreamed since then that I had a lot of chocolate caramels, but I always wake up just when I'm going to eat them. I do hope you won't be offended because I can't eat. Everything is extremely nice, but still I cannot eat."

"Anne please be quiet."

"I guess she's upset," said Matthew, who hadn't spoken since his return from the barn with Olivia. "Best put them to bed, Marilla."

Marilla had been wondering where Anne should be put to bed. She had prepared a couch in the kitchen chamber for the desired and wanted boy and the other was to go into the west gable room. But, although the couch was neat and clean, it did not seem quite the thing to put a girl there even if she was a stray waif like Anne. She definitely couldn't go in the spare room so there remained only the east gable room. Marilla lit a candle and told the children to follow her, which Anne and Olivia disconsolately did, taking their hats and bags from the hall table as they passed. The hall was intimidatingly clean; the little gable chamber in which she presently found herself occupying seemed almost cleaner.

Marilla set the candle on a three-legged, three-cornered table and turned down the bedclothes.

"I suppose you have a nightgown?" she questioned.

Anne nodded.

"Yes, We have two each. The matron of the asylum made them for us. They're so very skimpy. There was never enough to go around in an asylum, so things are always skimpy—at least in our poor asylum. I loathe skimpy night-dresses. But you can dream just as well in them as in ruffled beautiful ones, with a train trailing behind you, that's one consolation."

"Well, undress as quick as you can and go to bed. I'll come back in a few minutes for the candle. I don't trust you to put the candle out yourself. You'd probably set the place on fire."

When Marilla had left with Olivia Anne looked around her meekly. The whitewashed walls were so blank and bare and boring that she thought they must be so sad about their own bareness. The floor was a bare polished wood except for a little circular braided mat in the middle such as Anne had never seen. In one corner was the bed, a tall, old-fashioned one, with four oak, low-turned posts. In the other corner was the aforesaid three-corner table adorned with a fat, red velvet pin-cushion hard enough to turn the point of the most adventurous pin. Above it hung a little twelve-by-ten mirror. Midway between table and bed was the frosty window, with an icy white muslin sheet over it, and across from it was the old oaken wash-stand. The whole gable was of a sternness not to be described in words, but which sent a shiver down her spine to the very marrow of Anne's bones. With a cry she quickly castaway her habiliments, put on the aforesaid skimpy nightgown and leapt into the high bed where she tunneled her face downward into the pillow and pulled the sheets over her coppery head.

Whilst Marilla escorted Olivia to her new west gable room which was similarly furnished in the same manner.

"Thank you Miss Cuthbert." said Olivia icily. Marilla sighed awkwardly and told Olivia that she would be back to blow out the candle soon. Then Marilla departed for the east gable.

When Marilla came up for the candle diverse skimpy articles of raiment scattered so untidily over the wooden floor and a certain tempestuous exhibition of the bed were the only indications of any presence save her own.

She emphatically picked up Anne's garments, placed them uniformly on a stiff yellow chair, and then, taking up the blown out candle, walked over to the bed.

"Good night," she said, a little awkwardly, but not unjustly.

Anne's pale face and enormous eyes appeared over the bedsheets with a alarming suddenness.

"How can you call it a GOOD night when you know it must be the very worst night I've ever had?" she said reproachfully.

Then she dived down into invisibility again.

Marilla went slowly down to the kitchen and proceeded to wash the supper platters. Matthew was smoking—a sure sign of disorder of mind. He barely ever smoked, for Marilla set her head against it as a dirty habit; but at certain times and seasons he felt driven to it and then Marilla winked at the practice, realizing that a just man must have some vent for his emotions.

"Well, this is a pretty kettle of fish," she said annoyedly. "This is what comes of sending word instead of going ourselves. Richard Spencer's family have changed that message somehow. One of us will have to drive over and see Mrs. Spencer tomorrow, that's certain. These girls will have to be sent back to the asylum."

"Yes, I suppose so," said Matthew wistfully.

"You SUPPOSE so! Don't you realize it?"

"Well now, they're real nice little things, Marilla. It's kind of a pity to send them back when the little one Anne's so set on staying here."

"Matthew Cuthbert, you don't mean to say you think we ought to keep them!"

Marilla's astonishment could not have been greater if Matthew had expressed a predilection for standing on his head.

"Well, now, no, I suppose not—not exactly," stammered Matthew, uncomfortably driven into a corner for his precise meaning. "I suppose—we could hardly be expected to keep her."

"I should say not. What good would she be to us?"

"We might be some good to her," said Matthew suddenly and unexpectedly.

"Matthew Cuthbert, I believe that child has bewitched you! I can see as plain as plain that you want to keep them."

"Well now, she's a real interesting little thing," persisted Matthew. "You should have heard her talk coming from the station."

"Oh, she can talk fast enough. I saw that at once. It's nothing in her favour, either. I don't like children who have so much to say. I don't want an orphan girl and if I did she isn't the style I'd pick out. There's something I don't understand about her. No, she's got to be despatched straight-way back to where she came from."

"I could use Olivia to help me," said Matthew, "and she'd be company for you."

"I'm not suffering for company," said Marilla shortly. "And I'm not going to keep them."

"Well now, it's just as you say, of course, Marilla," said Matthew rising and putting his pipe away. "I'm going to bed."

To bed went Matthew. And to bed, when she had put her dishes away, went Marilla, frowning most stern. And up-stairs, in the two gables, two lonely, heart-hungry, orphan children cried themselves to slumber.


	4. Chapter 4

**CHAPTER IV. In the Morning at Green Gables**

It was broad daylight when Olivia awoke and sat up in the high, brass bed, staring confoundedly at the glass through which a stream of bright daylight was pouring in and outside of which some clouds, white and feathery, swam across remnants of the azure blue sky.

For a minute Olivia thought herself back at the asylum but after seeing the view out of the window she decide that could not be the case and what had seemed like a dream last night must not have been real.

But it was day and Olivia heard footsteps across the landing and lo behold, yes, it was Anne

"Oh, Olivia, what raptures I have seen, there is a beautiful cherry-tree in full bloom outside of my east window. When I saw I bounced out of my creaky, old bed and half-way across the floor. I pushed up the window - it went up stiffly and creakily, as if it hadn't been opened for a long time, which was the case; and it stuck so tight that nothing was needed to hold it up."

"Oh really mine is quite free moving, how odd."

"Well I overheard Marilla tell Matthew that this room was so stuffy and that it needed some air so I imagine she aired it last night."

"Anne you shouldn't eavesdrop it's not nice and if you hear bad things remember it's not their fault."

"And neither was it theirs, it was entirely mine."

Olivia surveyed the view onto the June morning, her eyes shining with anticipation of what the day could bring. Oh, wasn't it amazing?

"Isn't it a perfectly delightful place?" Anne said interrupting the reverent silence. "Olivia, suppose we were going to stay here! What then! Can I imagine we are? There is scope for imagination here."

"By all means go ahead but I for one am not going to get my hopes up, otherwise I would crash rather dreadfully on the ground after a rather short flight."

"But while the flight is intact it is such fun."

"Yes, but if we are able to stay here then I can have a much more salubrious flight afterwards with you and Matthew and Marilla."

"Do you see all that beautiful land, Olivia."

"Yes, but Anne don't get too attached to it as we may not stay here long."

"You're right it is just so very, very wonderful."

"Anne I think you should go back to your room now."

"You are right again, very well I shall leave you in your peace and solitude now."

Olivia's beauty-loving eyes remained on it all, taking everything greedily in. She had looked on so many homely places in her life, poor child. But this was as lovely as anything she had ever dreamed for her sister or indeed for herself.

She stood there, lost to everything but the attractiveness of the world around her, until she was startled by a hand on her shoulder. Marilla had come in unseen by the little girl who felt much responsibility for her younger twin.

"It's time you should be getting dressed," she said bluntly.

"Of course, Marilla." She answered her voice shaking.

Marilla had not experienced how to talk to a child, and her awkward bewilderment made her brisk and firm when she did not mean to be.

Olivia turned around and drew a short breath.

"Do I need to do anything before breakfast, Marilla?"

"Yes, wash your face and comb your hair. Leave the window up and turn your bedclothes back over the foot of the bed. Be as smart as you can. And then please see to your sister Olivia."

"Of course I will, Marilla, at once."

Olivia could evidently be smart so some purpose for she was down-stairs in five minutes' time, with Anne, with their clothes smartly on, their hair brushed and in Anne's case braided, their faces washed, and a comfortable consciousness pervading Olivia's soul that she with Anne had fulfilled all Marilla's requirements. As a matter of fact, however, Anne had forgotten to turn back the bedclothes.

"I'm starving this morning," she declared as they slid into the chairs Marilla had placed for them. "The world doesn't seem such a howling wilderness as it did last night. I'm so glad it's a sunshiny morning. But I like rainy mornings real well, too. All sorts of mornings are interesting, don't you think?"

"For pity's sake hold your tongue," said Marilla. "You talk entirely too much for a little girl."

Thereupon Anne held her tongue so obediently and thoroughly that her continued silence made Marilla rather nervous, as if in the presence of something not exactly natural. Matthew also held his tongue,-but this was natural,-so that the meal was a conversation between Marilla &amp; Olivia.

As it progressed Anne became more and more withdrawn, eating unchangeably, with her big eyes fixed unswervingly and unseeingly on the sky outside the window. This made Marilla more nervous than ever; and Olivia seeing this calmly and gently woke Anne up out of her reverie, which made Marilla more nervous than before in seeing the ease in which they interacted with each other how could she, and Matthew coming to think of it, ever be part of their lives.

Yet Matthew wished to keep them, of all arcane things! Marilla knew that he wanted it just as much this morning as he had the other night, and that he would by all means go on wanting it. That was Matthew's way-take an impulse to his head and he would persevere with it with the most marvellous silent persistency-an insistency a thousand times more dominant and effectual in its very silence than if he had talked it out.

When the meal was ended Anne offered to wash the dishes.

"Can you do it right?" asked Marilla sceptically.

"Pretty well. I'm better at looking after children, though…"

"Yes, she can and I can help on the farm if it comes to that." Stated Olivia and as Matthew was going out to the barn she followed.

"I think he's an amazing man," said Anne hurt on Matthew's behalf. "He is so very compassionate. He doesn't mind how much I talk-to be honest he actually seemed to like all my chatter. I knew that he was a kindred spirit as soon as ever I saw him and evidently about Olivia."

"We're all queer enough, if that's what you mean by kindred spirits," said Marilla with a long-suffering sniff. "Yes, you may wash the dishes. Take plenty of scalding water, and be sure you scour them well. I've enough to attend to this morning for I'll have to call over at White Sands in the afternoon and talk to Mrs. Spencer about you and your sister. You'll both come with me and we'll settle what's to be done with you. After you've finished the dishes, call your sister into the house, go up-stairs and make your beds.

Anne washed the dishes finely enough, as Marilla who kept a sharp eye on the process, apprehended. Later on she made her bed less successfully calling on her sister for help several times, for she had never learned the art of wrestling with a feather tick. But it was done after Olivia taking over half-way through and smoothing it down; and then Marilla, to relieve her, told her that they might go out-of-doors and amuse themselves until lunch.

"Come on Olivia, let's go."

Anne flew to the door, face alight, eyes glowing, followed by her sister. On the very threshold she stopped short, wheeled about, came back and sat down by the table, light and glow as effectually blotted out as if someone had clapped an extinguisher on her.

"Anne? Come on."

"I don't dare go out," said Anne, in the tone of a martyr relinquishing all earthly joys. "If I can't stay here there is no use in my loving Green Gables. And if I go out there and get acquainted with all those trees and flowers and the orchard and the brook I'll not be able to help loving it. It's hard enough now, so I won't make it any harder. I want to go out so much-everything seems to be calling to me,

"Let's go Anne stop speaking nonsense and let's go out."

"Don't you see I can't. There is no use in loving things if you have to be torn from them, is there? And it's so hard to keep from loving things, isn't it? That was why I was so glad when I thought I was going to live here. I thought I'd have so many things to love and nothing to hinder me. But that brief dream is over. I am resigned to my fate now, so I don't think I'll go out for fear I'll get unresigned again. What is the name of that geranium on the window-sill, please?"

"Fine I shall go by myself and climb trees, paddle in brooks and all sorts of delightful things. And also that is an apple-scented geranium, but why don't you call it Bonnie?"

"What a good idea Olivia &amp; you are right I am being silly. Let's go outside." They went outside and did climb trees, paddle in brooks and did all other sorts of delightful things.

'I never in all my life say or heard anything to equal her,' thought Marilla, routing a hasty retreat down to the cellar after the potatoes. 'Anne is kind of alluring and Olivia really is a helpful, trustworthy creature as Matthew says. I can feel already that I'm wondering what on earth they'll say next. They'll be casting a spell over me, too. They've cast it over Matthew. That look he gave me when he went out said everything he said or hinted last night all over again. I wish he was like other men and would talk things out. A body could answer back then and talk back at him into reason. But what's to be done with a man who just STARES?'

"I suppose I can have the buggy this afternoon, Matthew?" said Marilla.

Matthew nodded and contemplated dejectedly at the twins. Marilla interposed the look and said firmly:

"I'm going to go over to White Sands and get to the bottom of this particular problem. I'll take both of them with me and Mrs. Spencer will doubtlessly make appropriate preparations to send them back to Nova Scotia at once. I'll set your tea out for you and I'll be back in time to milk the cows."

Still Matthew said nothing and Marilla had a sense of having wasted words and breathe. There is nothing more irritating than a man who won't talk back-unless it is a woman who hypothetically wouldn't.

Matthew tethered the sorrel into the buggy in due time and Marilla, Olivia and Anne set off. Matthew opened the barn gate for them and as they left slowly through, he said, to nobody apparent as it seemed.

"Little Jerry Buote from the Creek was here this morning, and I told him I guessed I'd have him for the summer."

Marilla made no reply, but she hit the unfortunate mare such a savage nick with the whip that the plump sorrel, unused to such regimen, whooshed heatedly down the lane at a distressing pace. Marilla looked back once as the curricle bounded along and saw that provoking Matthew slanting over the fence, looking dolefully after the departing group of misfortune people.


	5. Chapter 5

**CHAPTER V. The Children's History**

"Do you know," said Olivia openly, "I've made up my mind to have fun on this drive. It's been my experience that you can nearly always have fun on things if you make up your will strictly that you should be able to. Of course, you must make it up strictly. I am not going to think about going back to the asylum while we're having our call. I'm just going to contemplate about the ride."

"Oh, look, there's one little, pretty, wild lilac tree out! Isn't it wonderful? Don't you think it must be glad to be a lilac tree? Wouldn't it be nice if lilac trees could talk? I'm sure they could tell us such beautiful things. And isn't purple the most enchanting hue on the earth? I love it, and I am so glad I am able to wear it, as I can't wear pink . Redheaded people can never wear pink, not even in fantasy and it isn't very fair as Olivia can."

"It is hardly my fault that you were born with the short straw. But your hair could darken into a deeper shade of red, could it not Marilla?"

"No, I don't know as I ever did," said Marilla ruthlessly, "and I shouldn't think it likely to happen in your case either."

Anne sighed.

"Well, that is another hope gone. 'My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.' That's a sentence I read in a book once, and I say it over to comfort myself whenever I'm disappointed in anything."

"I don't see where the comforting comes in myself," said Marilla.

"Ditto." Olivia muttered.

"Why, because it sounds so lovely and glamourous, just as if I were a damsel in distress in a book, you know."

"Shush Anne."

"Oh, what I KNOW about myself isn't really worth telling," said Anne eagerly. "If you'll only let me tell you what I IMAGINE about myself you'll think it ever so much more interesting."

"No, I don't want any of your imaginings. Just you stick to bald facts. Begin at the beginning. Where were you born and how old are you?"

"We were eleven last March," said Olivia, resigning herself to the fact that Anne would never tell the bald facts with a little sigh. "And we were born in Bolingbroke, Nova Scotia. My father's name was Walter Shirley, and he was a teacher in the Bolingbroke High School. My mother's name was Bertha Shirley…"

"Aren't Walter and Bertha lovely names?" Broke in Anne. "I'm so glad my parents had nice names. It would be a real disgrace to have a parent named—well, say Jedidiah, wouldn't it?"

"I guess it doesn't matter what a person's name is as long as he behaves himself," said Marilla, feeling herself called upon to inculcate a good and useful moral.

"Well, I don't know." Anne looked thoughtful. "I read in a book once that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I've never been able to believe it. I don't believe a rose WOULD be as nice if it was called a thistle or a skunk cabbage. I suppose my father could have been a good man even if he had been called Jedidiah; but I'm sure it would have been a cross.

"Anyway, my mother was a teacher in the High school, too, but when she married father she gave up teaching, of course. A husband was enough responsibility. Mrs. Thomas said that they were a pair of babies and as poor as paupers. They went to live in a weeny-teeny little green house in Bolingbroke.

"We've never seen that house, but I've imagined it thousands of times." Broke in Anne again eagerly, "I think it must have had honeysuckle over the parlour window and lilacs in the front yard and lilies of the valley just inside the gate. Yes, and muslin curtains in all the windows. Muslin curtains give a house such an air.

"We were born in that house. Mrs. Thomas said we were the homeliest babies she ever saw, that Anne was so lanky and small and nothing but eyes, but that mother thought we were amazingly wonderful. I should think a mother would be a better judge than an impoverished woman who came in to sweep, wouldn't you? I'm happy she was appeased with us anyhow; I would feel so desolate if I thought we were a failure to her—because she didn't survive very long after that, you see. She died of consumption when I was only three months old. I do wish she'd prolonged her life enough for us to remember calling her mother."

"I think it would be so sweet to say 'mother,' don't you?" Anne broke in once again. "And father died four days afterwards from consumption too. That left us orphans and folks was at their wits' end, so Mrs. Thomas said what to do with us. You see, not one person wanted us even then. It seems to be our destiny…"

Olivia burst in "Father and mother had both come from faraway places and it was generally known they hadn't any family living. At the end Mrs. Thomas said she'd take us, though she wasn't rich and had an alcoholic husband. She brought us up by hand."

"Do you know if there is anything in being brought up by hand that ought to make people who are brought up that way better than other people? Because whenever I was exasperating Mrs. Thomas would ask me how I could be such a naughty child when she had brought me up by hand—monitory-like.

"Mr. and Mrs. Thomas moved away from Bolingbroke to Marysville, and we stayed with them until we were eight years old. Anne helped look after the Thomas children—there were four of them younger than me—and I can tell you they took a lot of looking after &amp; I did the housework and farm work. Then Mr. Thomas was killed falling under a train and his mother offered to take Mrs. Thomas and the children, but she didn't want us. Mrs. Thomas was at HER wits' end, so she said what to do with us. Then Mrs. Hammond from down the valley came up and said she'd take us, seeing as Anne was handy with children and I was good with housework, and we went down the valley to stay with her in a tiny glade among the stumps.

"I'm sure I could never have stayed there if I hadn't had an imagination. Mr. Hammond worked a little sawmill up there, and Mrs. Hammond had eight children. She had twins three times. I like babies in moderation, but twins three times in succession is TOO MUCH. I told Mrs. Hammond &amp; Olivia so firmly, when the last pair came. I used to get so dreadfully tired carrying them about.

"We stayed down in the valley with Mrs. Hammond over two years, and then Mr. Hammond died and Mrs. Hammond broke up housekeeping. She divvied her children among her relatives and went to the States. We had to go to the asylum at Hopeton, because nobody would take us. They didn't want us at the asylum, either; they said they were over-populated as it was. But they had to take us and we were there four months until Mrs. Spencer came."

Olivia finished up with another sigh, of relief this time. Evidently she did not like talking about her experiences in a world that had not wanted her.

"Did you ever go to school?" demanded Marilla, turning the sorrel mare down the shore road.

"Not a great deal. We went a little the last year we stayed with Mrs. Thomas. When we were down in the valley we were so far from a school that we couldn't walk it in winter and there was a vacation in summer, so we could only go in the spring and autumn. But of course we went while we were at the asylum. We can read quite well and Anne knows ever so many pieces of poetry off by heart…

"'The Battle of Hohenlinden' and 'Edinburgh after Flodden,' and 'Binge of the Rhine,' and most of the 'Lady of the Lake' and most of 'The Seasons' by James Thompson. Don't you just love poetry that gives you a crinkly feeling up and down your back? There is a piece in the Fifth Reader—'The Downfall of Poland'—that is just full of thrills. Of course, we weren't in the Fifth Reader—we were only in the Fourth—but the big girls used to lend me theirs to read."

"Were those women—Mrs. Thomas and Mrs. Hammond—good to you?" asked Marilla, looking at Anne out of the corner of her eye.

"O-o-o-h," faltered Anne. Her sensitive little face suddenly flushed scarlet and discomposure sat on her forehead.

Olivia interrupted quickly "Oh, they meant to be—I know they meant to be just as helpful and cordial as possible. And when people mean to be helpful to you, you don't mind very much when they're not quite—always. They had a good deal to worry them, you know. It's very trying to have an alcoholic husband, you see; and it…"

"…Must be very trying to have twins three times in succession, don't you think? But I feel sure they meant to be good to me."

Marilla interrogated no more. From that narrative she had deduced their characters. Anne gave herself up to a silent rapture over the shore road, whilst Olivia sat awkwardly on the seat and Marilla advised the mare automatically while she wondered unhappily. Compassion was finally moving in her heart for the child. What a malnourished, abhorred past they had had—a past of struggle and difficulty and disrespect; for Marilla was clever enough to read between the lines of their life story and protrude the truth. No wonder that Olivia was so over-protective of Anne. No wonder Anne had been so joyful at the idea of a real home. It was a misfortune they had to be taken back. What if she, Marilla, should pamper Matthew's inexplicable impulse and let them stay? He was absolute on it; and the children seemed considerable, amenable little things.

"Anne's got too much to say," Thought Marilla, "but she might be trained out of that. And there's nothing rude or slangy in what she does say. And Olivia could be trained out of being a second mother to Anne. They're ladylike. It's likely their people were good folks."

The shore road was "foresty and dense and desolate." On the right hand, weeping willows, their wills well ceaseless by hard years of scuffle with the cove winds, grew thickly. On the left were the rough, red sandstone craggy cliffs, so close to the path in places that a sorrel of fewer steadiness's' than the mare might have tried the nerves of the people behind her. Down at the bottom of the precipice were mountains of surf-worn pebbles or tiny rocky gulfs inlaid with stones as with Mediterranean wonders; beyond these lay the sea, glistening and azure, and over it glided the seagulls, their plumes shining dusky in the sunlight.

"Isn't the sea beautiful?" exclaimed Anne, stirring from a lengthy reverie. "Once, when we lived in Marysville, Mr. Thomas rented an express wagon and took us all to spend the day at the sea ten miles away. I loved every moment of that day, even if I had to look after those troublesome children all the time. I lived it over in joyful dreams for years. But this shore is nicer than the Marysville shore. What big house is that just ahead, please?"

"That's the White Sands Hotel. Mr. Kirke runs it, but the interval hasn't begun yet. There are lots of Americans come there for the fall. They think this shore is just about right."

"I was afraid it might be Mrs. Spencer's house," said Anne passionately. "I don't want to reach there. Somehow, it will seem like the conclusion of destiny."

**_Hey sorry for the long break work and stuff caught up with me._**

**_Lots of laughs_**

_**Cecily **_**:):):)**


	6. Chapter 6

**CHAPTER VI. Marilla Makes Up Her Mind **

There is always an end to a journey and the end of their journey came in due season. Mrs. Spencer lived in a big buttermilk-colored mansion at White Sands Cove, and she came to the door with surprise and welcome mingled on her round, kindly face.

"Dear, dear," she exclaimed, "you're the last folks I was looking for today, but I'm real glad to see you. You'll put your horse in? And how are you, girls?"

"We're well enough, thank you," said Olivia smilelessly. Blight seemed to have descended on her and her sister just looked downcast.

"I suppose we'll stay a little while to rest the mare," said Marilla, "but I promised Matthew I'd be home early. The fact is, Mrs. Spencer, there's been a queer mistake somewhere, and I've come over to see where it is. We send word, Matthew and I, for you to bring us two boys from the asylum. We told your brother Robert to tell you we wanted two boys around ten or eleven years old."

"Marilla Cuthbert, you don't say so!" said Mrs. Spencer in distress. "Why, Robert sent word down by his daughter Nancy and she said you wanted two girls—didn't she Flora Jane?" appealing to her daughter who had come out to the steps.

"She certainly did, Miss Cuthbert," corroborated Flora Jane earnestly.

"I'm dreadful sorry," said Mrs. Spencer. "It's too bad; but it certainly wasn't my fault, you see, Miss Cuthbert. I did the best I could and I thought I was following your instructions. Nancy is a terrible flighty thing. I've often had to scold her well for her heedlessness."

"It was our own fault," said Marilla resignedly. "We should have come to you ourselves and not left an important message to be passed along by word of mouth in that fashion. Anyhow, the mistake has been made and the only thing to do is to set it right. Can we send the children back to the asylum? I suppose they'll take them back, won't they?"

"I suppose so," Said Mrs. Spencer thoughtfully, "but I don't think it will be necessary to send them back. Mrs. Peter Blewett was up here yesterday, and she was saying to me how much she wished she'd sent by me for a little girl to help her. Mrs. Peter has a large family, you know, and she finds it hard to get help. Anne will be the very girl for you. I call it positively providential. But I suppose Olivia would have to be sent back."

"Miss Cuthbert, you wouldn't split us up, would you?" said Olivia earnestly as Anne willed back tears.

She knew Mrs. Peter Blewett only by sight as a small, shrewish-faced woman without an ounce of superfluous flesh on her bones. But she had heard of her. "A terrible worker and driver," Mrs. Peter was said to be; and discharged servant girls told fearsome tales of her temper and stinginess, and her family of pert, quarrelsome children. Marilla felt a qualm of conscience at the thought of handing Anne over to her tender mercies and having to send Olivia back to the asylum without her twin would be horrible for them both as the way it sounded was that they had never been split up in their lives.

"Well, I'll go in and we'll talk the matter over," she said.

"And if there isn't Mrs. Peter coming up the lane this blessed minute!" exclaimed Mrs. Spencer, bustling her guests through the hall into the parlor, where a deadly chill struck on them as if the air had been strained so long through dark green, closely drawn blinds that it had lost every particle of warmth it had ever possessed. "That is real lucky, for we can settle the matter right away. Take the armchair, Miss Cuthbert. Anne, Olivia, you sit here on the ottoman and don't wiggle. Let me take your hats. Flora Jane, go out and put the kettle on. Good afternoon, Mrs. Blewett. We were just saying how fortunate it was you happened along. Let me introduce you two ladies. Mrs. Blewett, Miss Cuthbert. Please excuse me for just a moment. I forgot to tell Flora Jane to take the buns out of the oven."

Mrs. Spencer whisked away, after pulling up the blinds. Olivia sitting mutely on the ottoman, with her hands clasped tightly in her lap, stared at Mrs Blewett as one fascinated. Was her sister to be given into the keeping of this sharp-faced, sharp-eyed woman without even her to look after her? She looked at Anne feeling instinctively that Anne couldn't keep the tears back when Mrs. Spencer returned, flushed and beaming, quite capable of taking any and every difficulty, physical, mental or spiritual, into consideration and settling it out of hand.

"It seems there's been a mistake about these little girls, Mrs. Blewett," she said. "I was under the impression that Mr. and Miss Cuthbert wanted two little girls to adopt. I was certainly told so. But it seems it was boys they wanted. So if you're still of the same mind you were yesterday, I think she'll be just the thing for you."

Mrs. Blewett darted her eyes over Anne from head to foot.

"How old are you and what's your name?" she demanded.

"Her name is Anne Shirley," said Olivia boldly seeing as Anne was not going to answer, "and she is eleven years old. And I am her twin Olivia Shirley and I would rather you didn't separate us."

"Humph! I suppose she can speak for herself. Well you don't look as if there was much to you. But you're wiry. I don't know but the wiry ones are the best after all. Well, if I take you you'll have to be a good girl, you know—good and smart and respectful. I'll expect you to earn your keep, and no mistake about that. Yes, I suppose I might as well take her off your hands, Miss Cuthbert but I can't take her twin I don't need any more children under my roof who can't earn their keep. The baby's awful fractious and I'm clean worn out attending to him. If you like I can take her right home now."

Marilla looked at the children and softened at sight of the children's pale faces with its look of indignation and mute misery—the misery of helpless little creatures who finds themselves once more caught in the trap from which they had escaped. Marilla felt an uncomfortable conviction that, if she denied the appeal of those looks, it would haunt her to her dying day. More-over, she did not fancy Mrs. Blewett. To hand a sensitive, "high-strung" child over to such a woman without her twin to protect her! No, she could not take the responsibility of doing that!

"Well, I don't know," she said slowly. "I didn't say that Matthew and I had absolutely decided that we wouldn't keep them. In fact I may say that Matthew is disposed to keep them. I just came over to find out how the mistake had occurred. I think I'd better take them home again and talk it over with Matthew. I feel that I oughtn't to decide on anything without consulting him. If we make up our mind not to keep them we'll bring or send Anne over to you tomorrow night. If we don't you may know that they are going to stay with us. Will that suit you, Mrs. Blewett?"

"I suppose it'll have to," said Mrs. Blewett ungraciously.

During Marilla's speech a sunrise had been dawning on their faces. First the look of despair faded out; then came a faint flush of hope; Anne's eyes grew deep and bright as morning stars. The children were quite transfigured; and, a moment later, when Mrs. Spencer and Mrs. Blewett went out in quest of a recipe the latter had come to borrow Anne sprang up and flew across the room to Marilla.

"Oh, Miss Cuthbert, did you really say that perhaps you would let us stay at Green Gables?" she said, in a breathless whisper, as if speaking aloud might shatter the glorious possibility. "Did you really say it? Or did I only imagine that you did?"

"I think you'd better learn to control that imagination of yours, Anne, if you can't distinguish between what is real and what isn't," said Marilla crossly. "Yes, you did hear me say just that and no more. It isn't decided yet and perhaps we will conclude to let Mrs. Blewett take you after all. She certainly needs you much more than I do."

"I'd rather go back to the asylum with Olivia than go to live with her," said Anne passionately. "She looks exactly like a—like a gimlet."

"Stop tiring Miss Cuthbert out Anne! Come back and sit next to me on the ottoman and we can plan out what we're going to do next"

"Please keep us," said Anne, returning meekly to her ottoman. Then the two of them started whispering together.

When they arrived back at Green Gables that evening Matthew met them in the lane. Marilla from afar had noted him prowling along it and guessed his motive. She was prepared for the relief she read in his face when he saw that she had at least brought back them back with her. But she said nothing, to him, relative to the affair, until they were both out in the yard behind the barn milking the cows. Then she briefly told him the children's history and the result of the interview with Mrs. Spencer.

"I wouldn't give a dog I liked to that Blewett woman," said Matthew with unusual vim.

"I don't fancy her style myself," admitted Marilla, "but it's that or keeping them ourselves, Matthew. And since you seem to want them, I suppose I'm willing—or have to be. I've been thinking over the idea until I've got kind of used to it. It seems a sort of duty. I've never brought up a child, especially two girls, and I dare say I'll make a terrible mess of it. But I'll do my best. So far as I'm concerned, Matthew, they may stay."

Matthew's shy face was a glow of delight.

"Well now, I reckoned you'd come to see it in that light, Marilla," he said. "She's such an interesting little thing."

"It'd be more to the point if you could say she was a useful little thing, but at least her twin seems to be" retorted Marilla, "but I'll make it my business to see she's trained to be that. And mind, Matthew, you're not to go interfering with my methods. Perhaps an old maid doesn't know much about bringing up two children, but I guess she knows more than an old bachelor. So you just leave me to manage them. When I fail it'll be time enough to put your oar in."

"There, there, Marilla, you can have your own way," said Matthew reassuringly. "Only be as good and kind to them as you can without spoiling them. I kind of think they're one of the sort you can do anything with if you only get them to love you."

Marilla sniffed, to express her contempt for Matthew's opinions concerning anything feminine, and walked off to the dairy with the pails.

"I won't tell her tonight that they can stay," she reflected, as she strained the milk into the creamers. "They'd be so excited that they wouldn't sleep a wink. Marilla Cuthbert, you're fairly in for it. Did you ever suppose you'd see the day when you'd be adopting two orphan girls? It's surprising enough; but not so surprising as that Matthew should be at the bottom of it, him that always seemed to have such a mortal dread of little girls. Anyhow, we've decided on the experiment and goodness only knows what will come of it."

_**Hey Guys, **_

_**Sorry for not updating sooner, as compensation I am going to post 5 chapters at once. Do you want me to post once a week from now on or should I do installments of five chapters once a month?**_

_**Cecily Blythe **_


	7. Chapter 7

**CHAPTER VII. The Children Say Their Prayers **

When Marilla took the children up to bed that night she said rigidly:

"Last night, Anne, you flung your clothes all over the floor when you took them off in the future please remember that this is a bad habit and is not allowed at all. As soon as you take off any article of clothing fold it tidily and place it on your chair. You won't be able to stay otherwise. I won't have any girls who are untidy in my house."

"Don't worry Miss Cuthbert, Anne usually folds her clothes just last night we were both so distressed about the situation on hand that it slipped her mind, isn't that right Anne?" Olivia remarked.

"Yes but sometimes when I was at the asylum I'd forget because I was in such a hurry to get into bed and imagine nice and lovely things."

"Well you'll have to remember if you are to stay here," admonished Marilla. "There, that looks something like. Say your prayers now and get into bed."

"Anne hasn't said prayers since she found out that God gave her red hair on purpose but we do know who God is, evidently."

"'God is a spirit, infinite, eternal and unchangeable, in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth,'" responded Anne promptly and glibly.

"Well that's something! You're not quite a heathen. I assume you learnt that in Sunday school?"

"Yes, Anne learnt that because the words gave her a certain thrill. I assume it is because they're so grand and she thinks it sounds like poetry."

"They made us learn the whole catechism. I liked it pretty well. There's something splendid about some of the words. 'Infinite, eternal and unchangeable.' Isn't that grand? It has such a roll to it—just like a big organ playing. You couldn't quite call it poetry, I suppose, but it sounds a lot like it, doesn't it?" said Anne eagerly.

"So, basically what I just said, Anne."

"No, I said something completely different."

"You do know that is a very wicked thing to not say your prayers every night? You're a very naughty little girl, I'm afraid. Well, whilst you stay here you must say you prayers. Do you also not say prayers, Olivia?"

"Of course I say my prayers, Miss Cuthbert." Olivia responded

"You'd find it easier to be bad than good if you had red hair," said Anne reproachfully. "People who haven't red hair don't know what trouble is. Mrs. Thomas told me that God made my hair red ON PURPOSE, and I've never cared about Him since. And anyhow I'd always be too tired at night to bother saying prayers. People who have to look after twins can't be expected to say their prayers. Now, do you honestly think they can?"

"Well you kneel down with your sister and Olivia, you teach her the classic "Now I lay me down to sleep but you are old enough to pray for yourself in the future Anne."

"Why, of course, if you want me to," assented Anne cheerfully. "I'd do anything to oblige you. But Olivia will have to tell me what to say for this once. After I get into bed I'll imagine out a real nice prayer to say always. I believe that it will be quite interesting, now that I come to think of it."

"Alright Anne, repeat after me: Now I lay me down to sleep,"

"_Now I lay me down to sleep," _

"I pray the Lord my soul to keep,"

"_I pray the Lord my soul to keep,"_

"If I shall die when I'm wake"

"_If I shall die when I'm wake"_

"I pray the Lord my soul to take,"

"_I pray the Lord my soul to take,"_

"Amen"

"_Amen" _said Anne respectfully. ""Why must people kneel down to pray? If I really wanted to pray I'll tell you what I'd do. I'd go out into a great big field all alone or into the deep, deep, woods, and I'd look up into the sky—up—up—up—into that lovely blue sky that looks as if there was no end to its blueness. And then I'd just FEEL a prayer. You know what I'd say if I would say my own prayer? Well it would go like this:

_Gracious heavenly Father, I thank Thee for the White_

_Way of Delight and the Lake of Shining Waters and Bonny_

_And the Snow Queen. I'm really extremely grateful for_

_Them. And that's all the blessings I can think of just_

_Now to thank Thee for. As for the things I want,_

_They're so numerous that it would take a great deal of_

_Time to name them all so I will only mention the two_

_Most important. Please let me stay at Green Gables;_

_And please let me be good-looking when I grow up._

_Amen._

"Wasn't that a beautiful prayer?" she asked eagerly, getting up. "I could have made it much more flowery if I'd had a little more time to think it over."

"Anne don't you think it was slightly irreverent to say that." Olivia replied.

"How is that irreverent? I feel more reverent than ever

"Olivia, why don't you go to bed now?" Marilla said kindly.

"Goodnight Miss Cuthbert," said a sleepy voice from under the covers.

"Goodnight Anne," Marilla replied softly.

Marilla retreated to the kitchen, set the candle firmly on the table, and glared at Matthew.

"Matthew Cuthbert, it's about time somebody adopted those children and taught them something. She's next door to a perfect heathen. Will you believe that Anne never said a prayer in her life till tonight? I had to get her sister to teach her the prayer and then after that she invented some irreverent rigmarole. And they shall go to Sunday-school just as soon as I can get some suitable clothes made for them. I foresee that I shall have my hands full. Well, well, we can't get through this world without our share of trouble. I've had a pretty easy life of it so far, but my time has come at last and I suppose I'll just have to make the best of it."


	8. Chapter 8

**CHAPTER VIII. The Bringing-up is begun **

For reasons best known to her, Marilla did not tell the children that they were to stay at Green Gables until the next afternoon. During the forenoon she kept the children busy with various tasks and watched over them with a keen eye while they did them. By noon she had concluded that Anne was smart and obedient, willing to work and quick to learn; her most serious shortcoming seemed to be a tendency to fall into daydreams in the middle of a task and forget all about it until such time as she was sharply recalled to earth by a reprimand or a catastrophe and that Olivia was obedient and neat, was a hard worker and knew how to do most of what she had to do, although she had a tendency to stop in the middle of what she was doing and start something else.

When Anne had finished washing the dinner dishes she suddenly confronted Marilla with the air and expression of one desperately determined to learn the worst. Olivia turned her head round from drying the dinner dishes eager to learn what Marilla would say to Anne's very important question. Anne's thin little body trembled from head to foot; her face flushed and her eyes dilated until they were almost black; she clasped her sister tightly, turned to face Marilla and said in an imploring voice:

"Oh, please, Miss Cuthbert, won't you tell us if you are going to send us away or not? I've tried to be patient all the morning, but I really feel that I cannot bear not knowing any longer. It's a dreadful feeling. Please tell me."

"You haven't scalded the dishcloth in clean hot water as I told you to do," said Marilla immovably. "Just go and do it before you ask any more questions, Anne."

I'll do it for her, Miss Cuthbert," said Olivia eagerly.

"No I want Anne to attend to the dishcloth."

So Anne went and attended to the dishcloth. Then with a desperate look at her sister she returned to Marilla and fastened her imploring eyes of the latter's face. "Well," said Marilla, unable to find any excuse for deferring her explanation longer, "I suppose I might as well tell you. Matthew and I have decided to keep you both—that is, if you will try to be good little girls and show yourself grateful. Why, child, whatever is the matter?"

"I'm crying," said Anne in a tone of bewilderment. "I can't think why. I'm glad as glad can be. Oh, GLAD doesn't seem the right word at all. I was glad about the White Way and the cherry blossoms—but this! Oh, it's something more than glad. I'm so happy. I'll try to be so good. It will be uphill work, I expect, for Mrs. Thomas often told me I was desperately wicked. However, I'll do my very best. But can you tell me why I'm crying?"

"Oh Anne, come her and give me a hug, oh isn't it amazing," cried Olivia happily. Anne went over to her sister and they started hugging fiercely.

"You must go to school; but it's only a fortnight till vacation so it isn't worthwhile for you to start before it opens again in September," said Marilla disapprovingly.

"What are we to call you?" asked Olivia. "Shall we always say Miss Cuthbert? Or can we call you Marilla?"

"Can I call you Aunt Marilla?" asked Anne eagerly.

"No; you'll call me just plain Marilla. I'm not used to being called Miss Cuthbert and it would make me nervous."

"It sounds awfully disrespectful to just say Marilla," protested Anne.

"I guess there'll be nothing disrespectful in it if you're careful to speak respectfully. Everybody, young and old, in Avonlea calls me Marilla except the minister. He says Miss Cuthbert—when he thinks of it."

"I'd love to call you Aunt Marilla," said Anne wistfully. "I've never had an aunt or any relation at all except from Olivia—not even a grandmother. It would make me feel as if I really belonged to you. Can't I call you Aunt Marilla?"

"Hush, Anne."

"I don't believe in imagining things different from what they really are," retorted Marilla. "When the Lord puts us in certain circumstances He doesn't mean for us to imagine them away. And that reminds me. Go into the sitting room, Olivia—be sure your feet are clean and don't let any flies in—and bring me out the illustrated card that's on the mantelpiece. The Lord's Prayer is on it and you two can devote your spare time this afternoon to learning it off by heart."

Olivia came promptly back in and set the card up against the jugful of apple blossoms Anne had brought in to decorate the dinner-table—Marilla had eyed that decoration askance, but had said nothing—called Anne over and sat with Anne's head on her arm, and both fell to studying it intently for several silent minutes.

"I like this," Anne announced at length. "It's beautiful. I've heard it before—I heard the superintendent of the asylum Sunday school said it over once. But I didn't like it then. He had such a cracked voice and he prayed it so mournfully. I really felt sure he thought praying was a disagreeable duty. This isn't poetry, but it makes me feel just the same way poetry does. 'Our Father who art in heaven hallowed be Thy name.' That is just like a line of music. Oh, I'm so glad you thought of making me learn this, Miss—Marilla."

"Shush, Anne" said Marilla shortly.

Anne tipped the vase of apple blossoms near enough to bestow a soft kiss on a pink-cupped bud, and then studied diligently for some moments longer.

"Marilla," she demanded presently, "do you think that we shall have other good friends in the Avonlea?"

"Diana Barry lives over at Orchard Slope and she's about your age. She's a very nice little girl, and perhaps she will be a playmate for you when she comes home. She's visiting her aunt over at Carmody just now. You'll have to be careful how you two behave yourselves, though. Mrs. Barry is a very particular woman. She won't let Diana play with any little girls who isn't nice and good."

Anne looked at Marilla through the apple blossoms, her eyes aglow with interest.

"What is Diana like? Her hair isn't red, is it? Oh, I hope not. It's bad enough to have red hair myself, and I'm so glad Olivia doesn't but I couldn't endure it in my friends."

"Diana is a very pretty little girl. She has black eyes and hair and rosy cheeks. And she is good and smart, which is better than being pretty."

"Oh, I'm so glad she's pretty. Next to being beautiful oneself—and that's impossible in my case—it would be best to have a beautiful sister or good friend. Before this my only other friend apart from Olivia were imaginary friends called Katie Maurice and Violetta; Katie Maurice was a reflection in a bookcase when I lived with Mrs. Thomas and Violetta a set of echoes set in some hills nearby Mrs. Hammond's house.

"I think it's just as well there wasn't," said Marilla drily. "I don't approve of such goings-on. You seem to half believe your own imaginations. It will be well for you to have a real live friend to put such nonsense out of your head. But don't let Mrs. Barry hear you talking about your Katie Maurice and your Violetta or she'll think you tell stories."

"Oh, I won't. I couldn't talk of them to everybody—their memories are too sacred for that. But I thought I'd like to have you know about them. Oh, look, here's a big bee just tumbled out of an apple blossom. Just think what a lovely place to live—in an apple blossom! Fancy going to sleep in it when the wind was rocking it. If I wasn't a human girl I think I'd like to be a bee and live among the flowers."

"Stop your imaginings Anne and learn this prayer. You could have already learnt it if you hadn't been talking

"Yesterday you wanted to be a sea gull," sniffed Marilla. "I think you are very fickle minded. I told you to learn that prayer and not talk. But it seems impossible for you to stop talking if you've got anybody that will listen to you. So go up to your room and learn it."

"Oh, I know it pretty nearly all now—all but just the last line."

"And I've already learnt it Marilla."

"Well then Olivia you can go out and help Matthew he's in the barn, but you Miss Anne can do as I tell you. Go to your room and finish learning it well, and you can stay there until I call you down to help me get tea." Olivia silently walked out of the kitchen door and put on her scrawny coat

"Can I take the apple blossoms with me for company?" pleaded Anne.

"No; you don't want your room cluttered up with flowers. You should have left them on the tree in the first place."

"I did feel a little that way, too," said Anne. "I kind of felt I shouldn't shorten their lovely lives by picking them—I wouldn't want to be picked if I were an apple blossom. But the temptation was IRRESISTIBLE. What do you do when you meet with an irresistible temptation?"

"Anne, did you hear me tell you to go to your room?"

Anne sighed, retreated to the east gable, and sat down in a chair by the window.

"There—I know this prayer. I learned that last sentence coming upstairs. Now I'm going to imagine things into this room so that they'll always stay imagined. The floor is covered with a white velvet carpet with pink roses all over it and there are pink silk curtains at the windows. The walls are hung with gold and silver brocade tapestry. The furniture is mahogany. I never saw any mahogany, but it does sound SO luxurious. This is a couch all heaped with gorgeous silken cushions, pink and blue and crimson and gold, and I am reclining gracefully on it. I can see my reflection in that splendid big mirror hanging on the wall. I am tall and regal, clad in a gown of trailing white lace, with a pearl cross on my breast and pearls in my hair. My hair is of midnight darkness and my skin is a clear ivory pallor. My name is the Lady Cordelia Fitzgerald and my sister is called Lady Olivia Fitzgerald and my friend is called Lady Diana Montgomery. No, it isn't—I can't make THAT seem real."

She danced up to the little looking-glass and peered into it. Her pointed freckled face and solemn gray eyes peered back at her.

"You're only Anne of Green Gables and your sister is only Olivia of Green Gables and you only hope that Diana Barry of Orchard Slope will be your friend," she said earnestly, "and I see you, just as you are looking now, whenever I try to imagine I'm the Lady Cordelia. But it's a million times nicer to be Anne of Green Gables with a twin sister and a friend-to-be than Anne of nowhere in particular with no relations and no friends, isn't it?"

She bent forward, kissed her reflection affectionately, and betook herself to the open window.

Anne blew a couple of airy kisses from her fingertips past the cherry blossoms and then, with her chin in her hands, drifted luxuriously out on a sea of daydreams.

Olivia looked out from the barn to the east gable window and sighed, her little sister could be very absent-minded at times but Anne, her little sister, needed a strong big sister such as Olivia to rely on.


	9. Chapter 9

**CHAPTER IX. Mrs. Rachel Lynde Is Properly Horrified **

The children had been a fortnight at Green Gables before Mrs. Lynde arrived to inspect them. Mrs. Rachel, to do her justice, was not to blame for this. A severe and unseasonable attack of grippe had confined that good lady to her house ever since the occasion of her last visit to Green Gables. Mrs. Rachel was not often sick and had a well-defined contempt for people who were; but grippe, she asserted, was like no other illness on earth and could only be interpreted as one of the special visitations of Providence. As soon as her doctor allowed her to put her foot out-of-doors she hurried up to Green Gables, bursting with curiosity to see Matthew and Marilla's orphans, concerning whom all sorts of stories and suppositions had gone abroad in Avonlea.

Anne and Olivia had made good use of every waking moment of that fortnight. Already they were acquainted with every tree and shrub about the place. They had discovered that a lane opened out below the apple orchard and ran up through a belt of woodland; and they had explored it to its furthest end in all its delicious vagaries of brook and bridge, fir coppice and wild cherry arch, corners thick with fern, and branching byways of maple and mountain ash.

They had made friends with the spring down in the hollow—that wonderful deep, clear icy-cold spring; it was set about with smooth red sandstones and rimmed in by great palm-like clumps of water fern; and beyond it was a log bridge over the brook.

That bridge led the children's dancing feet up over a wooded hill beyond, where perpetual twilight reigned under the straight, thick-growing firs and spruces; the only flowers there were myriads of delicate "June bells," those shyest and sweetest of woodland blooms, and a few pale, aerial starflowers, like the spirits of last year's blossoms. Gossamers glimmered like threads of silver among the trees and the fir boughs and tassels seemed to utter friendly speech.

All these raptured voyages of exploration were made in the odd half hours which she was allowed for play, and the children talked Matthew and Marilla half-deaf over her discoveries. Not that Matthew complained, to be sure; he listened to it all with a wordless smile of enjoyment on his face; Marilla permitted the "chatter" until she found herself becoming too interested in it, whereupon she always promptly quenched the children by a curt command to hold her tongue.

The children were out in the orchard when Mrs. Rachel came, wandering at her own sweet will through the lush, tremulous grasses splashed with ruddy evening sunshine; so that good lady had an excellent chance to talk her illness fully over, describing every ache and pulse beat with such evident enjoyment that Marilla thought even grippe must bring its compensations. When details were exhausted Mrs. Rachel introduced the real reason of her call.

"I've been hearing some surprising things about you and Matthew."

"I don't suppose you are any more surprised than I am myself," said Marilla. "I'm getting over my surprise now."

"It was too bad there was such a mistake," said Mrs. Rachel sympathetically. "Couldn't you have sent them back?"

"I suppose we could, but we decided not to. Matthew took a fancy to the younger one. And I must say I like them myself—although I admit they have their faults. The house seems a different place already. They're real bright little things."

Marilla said more than she had intended to say when she began, for she read disapproval in Mrs. Rachel's expression.

"It's a great responsibility you've taken on yourself," said that lady gloomily, "especially when you've never had any experience with children. You don't know much about them or their real disposition, I suppose, and there's no guessing how children like that will turn out. But I don't want to discourage you I'm sure, Marilla."

"I'm not feeling discouraged," was Marilla's dry response, "when I make up my mind to do a thing it stays made up. I suppose you'd like to see the children. I'll call them in."

Anne and Olivia came running in presently, their faces sparkling with the delight of their orchard ravings; but, abashed at finding the delight themselves in the unexpected presence of a stranger, she halted confusedly inside the door. They certainly were odd-looking little creatures in the short tight wincey dresses they had worn from the asylum, below which their thin legs seemed ungracefully long. Anne's freckles were more numerous and obtrusive than ever; the wind had ruffled her hatless hair into over-brilliant disorder; it had never looked redder than at that moment.

"Well, they didn't pick the smaller one for her looks, that's sure and certain," was Mrs. Rachel Lynde's emphatic comment. Mrs. Rachel was one of those delightful and popular people who pride themselves on speaking their mind without fear or favor. "She's terrible skinny and homely, Marilla. Come here, child, and let me have a look at you. Lawful heart, did anyone ever see such freckles? And hair as red as carrots! Come here, children, I say."

Olivia "came there," but not exactly as Mrs. Rachel expected. With one bound she crossed the kitchen floor and stood before Mrs. Rachel, her face scarlet with anger, her lips quivering, and her whole slender form trembling from head to foot.

"I hate you," she cried in a choked voice, stamping her foot on the floor. "I hate you—I hate you—I hate you—" a louder stamp with each assertion of hatred. "How dare you call my sister skinny and ugly? How dare you say my sister freckled and redheaded? You are a rude, impolite, unfeeling woman!"

"Olivia!" exclaimed Marilla in consternation.

Olivia subdued but Anne moved to face Mrs. Rachel undauntedly, head up, eyes blazing, hands clenched, and passionate indignation exhaling from her like an atmosphere.

"How dare you say such things about me?" she repeated vehemently. "How would you like to have such things said about you? How would you like to be told that you are fat and clumsy and probably hadn't a spark of imagination in you? I don't care if I do hurt your feelings by saying so! I hope I hurt them. You have hurt mine worse than they were ever hurt before even by Mrs. Thomas' intoxicated husband. And I'll NEVER forgive you for it, never, never!"

Stamp! Stamp!

"Did anybody ever see such a temper!" exclaimed the horrified Mrs. Rachel.

"Children, go to your room and stay there until I come up," said Marilla, recovering her powers of speech with difficulty.

Anne, bursting into tears, rushed to the hall door, slammed it until the tins on the porch wall outside rattled in sympathy, and fled through the hall and up the stairs like a whirlwind. A subdued slam above told that the door of the east gable had been shut with equal vehemence and Olivia ran off after her.

"Well, I don't envy you your job bringing THOSE up, Marilla," said Mrs. Rachel with unspeakable solemnity.

Marilla opened her lips to say she knew not what of apology or deprecation. What she did say was a surprise to her then and ever afterwards.

"Olivia is very protective of Anne and you shouldn't have twitted them, Rachel."

"Marilla Cuthbert, you don't mean to say that you are upholding them in such a terrible display of temper as we've just seen?" demanded Mrs. Rachel indignantly.

"No," said Marilla slowly, "I'm not trying to excuse them. They've been very naughty and I'll have to give her a talking to about it. But we must make allowances for them. They've never been taught what is right. And you WERE too hard on them, Rachel."

Marilla could not help tacking on that last sentence, although she was again surprised at herself for doing it. Mrs. Rachel got up with an air of offended dignity.

"Well, I see that I'll have to be very careful what I say after this, Marilla, since the fine feelings of orphans, brought from goodness knows where, have to be considered before anything else. Oh, no, I'm not vexed—don't worry yourself. I'm too sorry for you to leave any room for anger in my mind. You'll have your own troubles with those children. But if you'll take my advice—which I suppose you won't do, although I've brought up ten children and buried two—you'll do that 'talking to' you mention with a fair-sized birch switch. I should think THAT would be the most effective language for that kind of children. Well, good evening, Marilla. I hope you'll come down to see me often as usual. But you can't expect me to visit here again in a hurry, if I'm liable to be flown at and insulted in such a fashion. It's something new in MY experience."

Whereat Mrs. Rachel swept out and away—if a fat woman who always waddled COULD be said to sweep away—and Marilla with a very solemn face betook herself to the east gable.

On the way upstairs she pondered uneasily as to what she ought to do. She felt no little dismay over the scene that had just been enacted. How unfortunate that the children should have displayed such temper before Mrs. Rachel Lynde, of all people! Then Marilla suddenly became aware of an uncomfortable and rebuking consciousness that she felt more humiliation over this than sorrow over the discovery of such a serious defect in the children's disposition. And how was she to punish them? The amiable suggestion of the birch switch—to the efficiency of which all of Mrs. Rachel's own children could have borne smarting testimony—did not appeal to Marilla. She did not believe she could whip a child. No, some other method of punishment must be found to bring the children to a proper realization of the enormity of her offense.

Marilla found Anne face downward on her bed, crying bitterly, quite oblivious of muddy boots on a clean counterpane and Olivia sitting on the bed with her hand on Anne's back.

"Children," she said not ungently.

No answer.

"Both of you," with greater severity, "get off that bed this minute and listen to what I have to say to you."

Anne moved into a seated position on the bed next to Olivia with her face swollen and tear-stained and her eyes fixed stubbornly on the floor.

"This is a nice way for you to behave. Olivia! Aren't you ashamed of yourself?"

"She hadn't any right to call Anne ugly and redheaded," retorted Olivia, evasive and defiant.

"And you Anne hadn't any right to fly into such a fury and talk the way you did to her. I was ashamed of you—thoroughly ashamed of you. I wanted you two to behave nicely to Mrs. Lynde, and instead of that you have disgraced me. I'm sure I don't know why you Olivia should lose your temper like that just because Mrs. Lynde said Anne was red-haired and homely. She says it herself often enough."

"Oh, but there's such a difference between saying a thing yourself and hearing other people say it," wailed Anne. "You may know a thing is so, but you can't help hoping other people don't quite think it is. I suppose you think I have an awful temper, but I couldn't help it. When she said those things something just rose right up in me and choked me. I HAD to fly out at her."

"Well, you made a fine exhibition of yourself I must say. Mrs. Lynde will have a nice story to tell about you everywhere—and she'll tell it, too. It was a dreadful thing for you to lose your temper like that, children."

"Just imagine how you would feel if somebody told you to your face that you were skinny and ugly," pleaded Anne tearfully.

"Or if somebody insulted your sister," added Olivia defiantly.

An old remembrance suddenly rose up before Marilla. She had been a very small child when she had heard one aunt say of her to another, "What a pity she is such a dark, homely little thing." Marilla was every day of fifty before the sting had gone out of that memory.

"I don't say that I think Mrs. Lynde was exactly right in saying what she did to you, Anne," she admitted in a softer tone. "Rachel is too outspoken. But that is no excuse for such behavior on your part, Olivia or yours Anne. She was a stranger and an elderly person and my visitor—all three very good reasons why you should have been respectful to her. You both were rude and saucy and"—Marilla had a saving inspiration of punishment—"you both must go to her and tell her you are very sorry for your bad temper and ask her to forgive you."

"We can never do that," said Olivia determinedly and darkly. "You can punish us in any way you like, Marilla. You can shut us up in a dark, damp dungeon inhabited by snakes and toads and feed me only on bread and water and I shall not complain. But we cannot ask Mrs. Lynde to forgive us."

"We're not in the habit of shutting people up in dark damp dungeons," said Marilla drily, "especially as they're rather scarce in Avonlea. But apologize to Mrs. Lynde you must and shall and you'll stay here in your room until you can tell me you're willing to do it."

"We shall have to stay here forever then," said Anne mournfully, "because we can't tell Mrs. Lynde we're sorry we said those things to her. How can we? We're NOT sorry. We're sorry we've vexed you; but we're GLAD we told her just what we did. It was a great satisfaction. We can't say we're sorry when we're not, can we? We can't even IMAGINE we're sorry."

"Perhaps your imagination will be in better working order by the morning," said Marilla, rising to depart. "You'll have the night to think over your conduct in and come to a better frame of mind. You said you would try to be very good girls if we kept you at Green Gables, but I must say it hasn't seemed very much like it this evening."

Leaving this Parthian shaft to rankle in Anne and Olivia's stormy bosoms, Marilla descended to the kitchen, grievously troubled in mind and vexed in soul. She was as angry with herself as with the children, because, whenever she recalled Mrs. Rachel's dumbfounded countenance her lips twitched with amusement and she felt a most reprehensible desire to laugh.


	10. Chapter 10

**CHAPTER X. The Children's Apology **

Marilla said nothing to Matthew about the affair that evening; but when the children proved still refractory the next morning an explanation had to be made to account for their absence from the breakfast table. Marilla told Matthew the whole story, taking pains to impress him with a due sense of the enormity of the children behavior.

"It's a good thing Rachel Lynde got a calling down; she's a meddlesome old gossip," was Matthew's consolatory rejoinder.

"Matthew Cuthbert, I'm astonished at you. You know that Anne and Olivia's behavior was dreadful, and yet you take their part! I suppose you'll be saying next thing that they oughtn't to be punished at all!"

"Well now—no—not exactly," said Matthew uneasily. "I reckon they ought to be punished a little. But don't be too hard on them, Marilla. Recollect they haven't ever had anyone to teach them right. You're—you're going to give them something to eat, aren't you?"

"When did you ever hear of me starving people into good behavior?" demanded Marilla indignantly. "They'll have their meals regular, and I'll carry the tray up to them myself. But they'll stay up there until they're willing to apologize to Mrs. Lynde, and that's final, Matthew."

Breakfast, dinner, and supper were very silent meals—for the children still remained obdurate. After each meal Marilla carried two well-filled trays to the east gable and brought it down later on not noticeably depleted. Matthew eyed its last descent with a troubled eye. Had the children eaten anything at all?

When Marilla went out that evening to bring the cows from the back pasture, Matthew, who had been hanging about the barns and watching, slipped into the house with the air of a burglar and crept upstairs. As a general thing Matthew gravitated between the kitchen and the little bedroom off the hall where he slept; once in a while he ventured uncomfortably into the parlor or sitting room when the minister came to tea. But he had never been upstairs in his own house since the spring he helped Marilla paper the spare bedroom, and that was four years ago.

He tiptoed along the hall and stood for several minutes outside the door of the east gable before he summoned courage to tap on it with his fingers and then open the door to peep in.

Anne was sitting on the yellow chair by the window gazing mournfully out into the garden and Olivia was sitting on the window-sill gazing into the garden. Very small and unhappy they looked, and Matthew's heart smote them. He softly closed the door and tiptoed over to them.

"Anne and Olivia," he whispered, as if afraid of being overheard, "how are you making it, you both?"

They smiled wanly.

"Pretty well. We talk a good deal, and that helps to pass the time. Of course, it's rather upsetting that I'm never to go outside again. But then, we may as well get used to that."

Anne and Olivia smiled again, bravely facing the long years of imprisonment before them.

Matthew recollected that he must say what he had come to say without loss of time, lest Marilla return prematurely. "Well now, Anne, don't you think you'd better do it and have it over with?" he whispered. "It'll have to be done sooner or later, you know, for Marilla's a dreadful deter-mined woman—dreadful determined, Olivia. Do it right off, I say, and have it over."

"Do you mean apologize to Mrs. Lynde?"

"Yes—apologize—that's the very word," said Matthew eagerly. "Just smooth it over so to speak. That's what I was trying to get at."

"I suppose we could do it to oblige you," said Anne thoughtfully. "It would be true enough to say we are sorry, because WE ARE sorry now. We weren't a bit sorry last night. We were mad clear through, and we stayed mad all night. I know we did because we woke up three times and we were just furious every time. But this morning it was over. We weren't in a temper anymore—and it left a dreadful sort of goneness, too. We felt so ashamed of ourselves. But we just couldn't think of going and telling Mrs. Lynde so. It would be so humiliating. We made up our mind we've stay shut up here forever rather than do that. But still—we'd do anything for you—if you really want us to—"

"Well now, of course we do. It's terrible lonesome downstairs without you two. Just go and smooth things over—there's good girls."

"Very well," said Olivia resignedly. "I'll tell Marilla as soon as she comes in we've repented."

"That's right—that's right, Olivia. But don't tell Marilla I said anything about it. She might think I was putting my oar in and I promised not to do that."

"Wild horses won't drag the secret from us," promised Anne solemnly. "How would wild horses drag a secret from a person anyhow?"

But Matthew was gone, scared at his own success. He fled hastily to the remotest corner of the horse pasture lest Marilla should suspect what he had been up to. Marilla herself, upon her return to the house, was agreeably surprised to hear a plaintive voice calling, "Marilla" over the banisters.

"Well?" she said, going into the hall.

"We're sorry we lost our tempers and said rude things, and we're willing to go and tell Mrs. Lynde so."

"Very well." Marilla's crispness gave no sign of her relief. She had been wondering what under the canopy she should do if the children did not give in. "I'll take you two down after milking."

Accordingly, after milking, behold Marilla, Olivia and Anne walking down the lane, the elder erect and triumphant, and the two younger drooping and dejected. But halfway down Anne's dejection vanished as if by enchantment. She lifted her head and stepped lightly along, and then started to whisper with Olivia and an air of subdued exhilaration about them. Marilla beheld the change disapprovingly. This was no meek penitent such as it behooved them to take into the presence of the offended Mrs. Lynde.

"What are you whispering about, children?" she asked sharply.

"We're whispering what we must say to Mrs. Lynde," answered Anne crossly.

This was satisfactory—or should have been so. But Marilla could not rid herself of the notion that something in her scheme of punishment was going askew. Anne and Olivia had no business to whisper so cheerfully.

They continued to whisper so cheerfully until they were in the very presence of Mrs. Lynde, who was sitting knitting by her kitchen window. Then the cheerfulness vanished. Mournful penitence appeared on every feature. Before a word was spoken the children suddenly went down on their knees before the astonished Mrs. Rachel and held out their hands beseechingly.

"Oh, Mrs. Lynde, we are so extremely sorry," Anne said with a quiver in her voice. "We could never express all our sorrow, no, not if we used up a whole dictionary. You must just imagine it. We behaved terribly to you—and we've disgraced our dear friends, Matthew and Marilla, who have let us stayed at Green Gables although we're not boys. We're dreadfully wicked and ungrateful girls, and we deserve to be punished and cast out by respectable people forever. It was very wicked of us to fly into a temper because you told us the truth. It WAS the truth; every word you said was true. My hair is red and I'm freckled and skinny and ugly. What I said to you was true, too, but I shouldn't have said it. Oh, Mrs. Lynde, please, please, forgive us. If you refuse it will be a lifelong sorrow on poor little orphan girls, would you, even if they had a dreadful temper? Oh, I am sure you wouldn't. Please say you forgive us, Mrs. Lynde."

Anne and Olivia clasped their hands together, bowed their head, and waited for the word of judgment.

There was no mistaking their sincerity—it breathed in every tone of their voice. Both Marilla and Mrs. Lynde recognized its unmistakable ring. But the former under-stood in dismay that the children were actually enjoying their valley of humiliation—were reveling in the thoroughness of their abasement. Where was the wholesome punishment upon which she, Marilla, had plumed herself? Anne and Olivia had turned it into a species of positive pleasure.

Good Mrs. Lynde, not being overburdened with perception, did not see this. She only perceived that Anne and Olivia had made a very thorough apology and all resentment vanished from her kindly, if somewhat officious, heart.

"There, there, get up, children," she said heartily. "Of course I forgive you. I guess I was a little too hard on you, anyway. But I'm such an outspoken person. You just mustn't mind me, that's what. It can't be denied your hair is terrible red; but I knew a girl once—went to school with her, in fact—whose hair was every mite as red as yours when she was young, but when she grew up it darkened to a real handsome auburn. I wouldn't be a mite surprised if yours did, too—not a mite and you Olivia are very beautiful"

"Oh, Mrs. Lynde!" Olivia drew a long breath as she rose to her feet. "You have given us a hope. We shall always feel that you are a benefactor. Oh, we could endure anything if we only thought that Anne's hair would be a handsome auburn when she grew up. It would be so much easier to be good if one's hair was a handsome auburn, don't you think? And now may we go out into your garden and sit on that bench under the apple-trees while you and Marilla are talking? There is so much more scope for imagination out there."

"Laws, yes, run along, children. And you can pick a bouquet of them white June lilies over in the corner if you like."

As the door closed behind Anne and Olivia Mrs. Lynde got briskly up to light a lamp.

"They're real odd little things. Take this chair, Marilla; it's easier than the one you've got; I just keep that for the hired boy to sit on. Yes, they certainly are odd children, but there is something kind of taking about them after all. I don't feel so surprised at you and Matthew keeping them as I did—nor so sorry for you, either. They may turn out all right. Of course, they have a queer way of expressing themselves—a little too—well, too kind of forcible, you know; but they're likely get over that now that they're come to live among civilized folks. And then, their temper's pretty quick, I guess; but there's one comfort, a child that has a quick temper, just blaze up and cool down, isn't never likely to be sly or deceitful. Preserve me from a sly child, that's what. On the whole, Marilla, I kind of like them."

When Marilla went home Anne came out of the fragrant twilight of the orchard with a sheaf of white narcissi in her hands.

"We apologized pretty well, didn't we?" she said proudly as they went down the lane. "We thought since we had to do it we might as well do it thoroughly."

"You did it thoroughly, all right enough," was Marilla's comment. Marilla was dismayed at finding herself inclined to laugh over the recollection. She had also an uneasy feeling that she ought to scold the children for apologizing so well; but then, that was ridiculous! She compromised with her conscience by saying severely:

"I hope you won't have occasion to make many more such apologies. I hope you'll try to control your temper now, Anne, Olivia."

"That wouldn't be so hard if people wouldn't twit me about my looks," said Anne with a sigh. "I don't get cross about other things; but I'm SO tired of being twitted about my hair and it just makes me boil right over. Do you suppose my hair will really be a handsome auburn when I grow up?"

"You shouldn't think so much about your looks, Anne. I'm afraid you are a very vain little girl."

"How can she be vain when she know she's homely?" protested Olivia. "We love pretty things; and apparently she hates to look in the glass and see something that isn't pretty. It makes her feel so sorrowful—just as we feel when we look at any ugly thing. We pity it because it isn't beautiful."

"Handsome is as handsome does," quoted Marilla. "I've had that said to me before, but I have my doubts about it," remarked skeptical Anne, sniffing at her narcissi. "Oh, aren't these flowers sweet! It was lovely of Mrs. Lynde to give them to us. We have no hard feelings against Mrs. Lynde now. It gives you a lovely, comfortable feeling to apologize and be forgiven, doesn't it? Aren't the stars bright tonight? If you could live in a star, which one would you pick? I'd like that lovely clear big one away over there above that dark hill."

"Anne, do hold your tongue," said Marilla, thoroughly worn out trying to follow the gyrations of Anne's thoughts.

The children said no more until they turned into their own lane. A little gypsy wind came down it to meet them, laden with the spicy perfume of young dew-wet ferns. Far up in the shadows a cheerful light gleamed out through the trees from the kitchen at Green Gables. Anne suddenly came close to Marilla and slipped her hand into the older woman's hard palm.

"It's lovely to be going home and know its home," she said. "I love Green Gables already, and I never loved any place before. No place ever seemed like home. Oh, Marilla, I'm so happy. I could pray right now and not find it a bit hard."

Something warm and pleasant welled up in Marilla's heart at touch of that thin little hand in her own—a throb of the maternity she had missed, perhaps. Its very unaccustomedness and sweetness disturbed her. She hastened to restore her sensations to their normal calm by inculcating a moral.

"If you'll be a good girl you'll always be happy, Anne. And you should never find it hard to say your prayers."

"Saying one's prayers isn't exactly the same thing as praying," said Anne meditatively. "But I'm going to imagine that I'm the wind that is blowing up there in those tree tops. When I get tired of the trees I'll imagine I'm gently waving down here in the ferns—and then I'll fly over to Mrs. Lynde's garden and set the flowers dancing—and then I'll go with one great swoop over the clover field—and then I'll blow over the Lake of Shining Waters and ripple it all up into little sparkling waves. Oh, there's so much scope for imagination in a wind! So I'll not talk any more just now, Marilla."

"Thanks be to goodness for that," breathed Marilla in devout relief.


End file.
